School Board Meeting - 11/09/2023 - 5:00 PM

001I got say disc that's all yeah yeah and you do that when we come [Laughter] back you all are having entirely too much fun down there nice to be I'd like to call to order the beer County school board meeting scheduled for tonight November 9th 2023 uh Miss Kirby has notified me that she will not be Pres tonight due to her not feeling well Miss Johnson if you will do the roll call Mr Hill here Mr Daniels here Mrs Harriston here Mr Holbrook here Mr Nels here Dr mey here Mr Vice chair you have a quorum thank you do I have a motion for the approval of the agenda as presented so moved Mr chairman I have a motion do I have a second second by Mr NS any discussion yes Mr Hill with your

002permission we would like to reorder 2011 and 202 one of the presenters on 2011 uh is delayed and we'll be here by the time we finish with 202 just invert the order if that's agreeable to the board Dr mey would you like [Music] to resend your uh motion and then do another motion okay so I will um resend the motion I just made and make a new motion that we accept the agenda with the change of uh two 2.02 taking the place of 2.01 and vice versa all right so I have a motion to change the staff reports in the order of 2.01 and 2.2 reversing those do I have a second second second by Mr Holbrook any other discussion all of those in favor signify by saying I I any opposed right agenda is

003approved all right if you will please stand with me for the presentation of colors detail order arms left face res arms please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge of alance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all now we'll have a moment of silence thank you right face right shoulder arms four mark wait uh staff reports 2.01 quarter 1 benchmark results Dr trer if uh your permission Mr Hill I'd like to introduce Dr trer okay tonight we're going to be sharing the results of our first quarter benchmark assessments and by way of reminder board members you received these results via Wednesday memo two weeks ago on the 25th of October you might

004recall from previous discussions that these assessments themselves are new this year new to our students and our teachers through our membership with the comprehensive instructional program which is also known as CIP education a Consortium of various School divisions in Virginia mostly located west of Richmond uh we are working collaboratively with these other school divisions to improve our student achievement as measured by the SOS the CIP assessments which our students completed in this first quarter are considerably more rigorous than quarterly assessments that we have used in the past a key advantage of these assessments is their strong and proven correlation with so assessments so in tonight's presentation Dr Trosper is going to be making some comparisons with our division so results from last year to these first quarter Benchmark results and of course our teachers have

005had these results for several weeks now to reflect on the progress of their individual students and to share that information with their students parents during the teacher parent teacher conferences which were held earlier this week and our principles have also been reviewing the results for their school to determine areas of strength and concerns with regards to their own teachers and grade levels and content areas during the presentation tonight Dr Trosper will be sharing how our Central instructional support team has been analyzing these results in order to better support our principles and our teachers with any needed adjustments and any needed additional professional development Dr Trosper good evening each quarter schools participate in Benchmark testing as part of the assessments used to monitor student performance the benchmarks are given throughout a provided range of dates on

006the division assessment calendar once the assessments are done Division and school administrators teachers and other school staff look at the data after the window closes the division has provided pacing guides for each subject for teachers to follow this provides a road map of expectations and continuity of content acquisition throughout the division and aligns to the benchmark assessments given each quarter as part of teacher evaluations principles check to make sure that the content and objectives of the lesson match the current pacing guides the content taught during the quarter as outlined in the pacing guides aligns with the content assessed on The Benchmark Dr Woodford already shared first quarter Benchmark results with the board in a Wednesday memo this evening I will provide an analysis of the data show what data our schools are looking at how

007they're using the data to inform instruction and how special education and instruction are partnering to respond to the data as we support schools this year since students with disabilities is the subgroup that is of consistent concern in our division and across the state the chart on the screen is taken directly from from Dr woodford's Wednesday memo and shows Pass rates for quarter 1 benchmarks as a general rule we expect Pass rates to be a bit lower than so scores on benchmarks especially early in the year however Pass rates are just one data point available to us so in the following slides I will explain other data sources that are available to Bedford County staff to gain some context we compared quarter 1 benchmark scores to the spring 2023 so Pass rates the benchmarks given this

008year were given for the first time to students in Bedford County while I would like to present data that compares benchmark scores from this year to previous years they are so different this year that drawing comparisons would not be helpful since benchmarks given this year were developed through a rigorous process allows staff access to highquality detailed data reports and predictive tools all of which were previously unavailable to us the central support team strongly believes that these benchmarks will benefit students this year and in future school years as you know and as Dr Bergen said Bedford County joined a Consortium called the comprehensive instructional planning Midway through last school year each year curriculum teams consisting of teachers from all divisions in the Consortium meet to write benchmarks draft pacing guides and create resources for instruction after

009writing benchmarks they are sent to school divisions for input CIP curriculum teams meet again to discuss feedback and create final Benchmark exams that all schools in the CIP Consortium take the process is focused on alignment of content with the taught standards and produces reliable and predictable data after analyzing the data from quarter 1 benchmarks the team noted the following strengths and weaknesses for core subject areas first of all in English for grades 3 through 11 also known as Ela as you know we are in the process of implementing the new Elementary reading curriculum Benchmark Advance the curriculum is much more rigorous than what most of our teachers and students are used to however this curriculum is aligned to the science of reading and meets the criteria outlined by the Virginia literacy Act while there have

010been changes we are proud of our elementary schools for their commitment to implementing the curriculum effectively with Fidelity so the overall Pass rates for ELA as indicated on the slide are 68% for elementary 66% for middle school and 62% for high school and please note that in grades 9 through 11 the benchmarks are cumulative meaning they cover content for the whole year it's just for those grades though for math in grades three all the way up to Geometry as part of the CIP pacing guides the Math teachers agreed to frontload the hardest math material in the first nine weeks to provide additional practice so the overall Pass rates for math as indicated on this slide are 76% for elementary 62% for middle school and 67% for High School fourth and eighth grade made significant improvements

011for midyear data in 2022 and sixth and seventh grade are the mass scores that continue to be an area of concern but keep in mind that all of our students in advance Mass 7 actually take the mass math 8 Benchmark and the so test which pulls a large number of our higher performing students out of the seventh grade Benchmark results in science only grades four and five were assessed overall division pass rate was 79% but fifth grade actually had a pass rate of 85 which is the grade where students are tested in social studies overall Virginia study scores were strong with a 76% pass rate um except for the performance of our students of disabilities which we are continuing to work on improving when looking at CIP quarterly Benchmark data there are a variety of

012data points other than Pass rates that are available to get a complete picture of student performances this provides points of comparison previously unavailable to administrators the CIP reports provide information to help administrators determine if the school will likely have higher so Pass rates this year than last year or not school see Pass rates the number of students taken the test and percentage rankings for all students students with disabilities disadvantaged students stud English language Learners and other subgroups monitored on school quality profiles so in the following slides I will show you what data report schools are currently looking at based on first quarter Benchmark results there's too much information to review in depth but the school administration team wants the board to be aware of what data is available to our schools and understand that this

013data is customized to each school so first there's an analysis of scores by core subject broken down by school and for the division schools of course want to improve their Pass rates and they want to improve how they're performing in comparison to other schools the percentile rank or PR report is the most important statistic we use when we are analyzing benchmarks CIP member divisions have found that analyzing relative data is more important than analyzing proficiency rates in isolation schools have the ability to see percentage rates that compare Benchmark performance with other schools and the percentile rank statistic is useful as this demonstrates how our students perform relativ to everyone else's scores on the screen is an analysis of scores report from math I've covered the school name for this example but the left column shows

014Pass rates the far right column shows the percentile rankings of the school in comparison to CIP member divisions green represents the schools falling in the top third of CIP schools yellow in the second third and read the bottom third as an example how our schools might be using this data at a recent leadership team meeting I attended the school Improvement plan indicated that scores for students with disabilities were an area of concern in isolation the benchmark scores appeared low however the school looked closer and they celebrated that the percentile rankings for students with disabilities had actually improved from Spring SS which indicated a positive trend the next data point that our schools use comes from Mastery connect which is the division assessment platform while CIP provides the questions pacing guides teacher collabor collboration and in-depth

015comparisons between member School divisions Master connect is the assessment platform that allows us to give the Benchmark assessment in addition there are thousands of additional test items that teachers can use to create formative and summative assessments to use at any time teachers get detailed reports about student performance on each test given including benchmarks for the first quarter while useful to division Personnel to determine overall Pass rates Master connect is primarily used at the school level by teachers instruction coaches and administrators the first report is an item analysis report this measures class Mastery by question so first and foremost and most critical when analyzing student learning data is that teachers are using this item analysis tool to determine which at risk students need additional supports with which skills and then provide that support through reteaching a

016remediation of a whole class a small group or individual students depending on the data the report on the screen is a school level report from the first quarter Benchmark given to students in science 5 if you look at the report it clearly identifies that s so 4.2 bullet a is a standard that is that most of the students missed in this class level science benchmark this means the teacher should examine examine this question more closely to determine if remediation or reteaching is needed and which students should receive this intervention when teachers conduct analysis of test items effectively students score significantly higher on their so tests at the end of the year the instruction and special education teams are focused on coaching and supporting teachers as they analyze these reports the next report teachers have been

017trained to use is the Mastery by standard report which indicates how students overall performed on each standard the green yellow and red colors indicate the percentage of students who either meet or exceeds the expectation for performance on the standard are developing in their skills for the standard or those that are emerging each each Benchmark gives multiple questions for each standard and the master year by standard report tells teachers what skill or content needs reteaching another benefit of the report is that can be filtered by subgroup so on the screen there are two reports for the same Benchmark shown in the previous Slide the top chart is performance of students with disabilities on the standard and the bottom chart shows all student performance a teacher can use these charts to compare performance of a specific subgroup

018with all students so for example in this report it is noteworthy that all students of disabilities are on the red in 5.3 B while all students overall demonstrated some success the teacher would use this information to talk to a co- teer about remediating these specific students or give to a resource teacher to remediate while that student is receiving IEP Services the benefit of a master year by standard report is that teachers are able to reflect on what scaffolds are needed to help students learn the standard the final report is another variation of the master by standard report in this report student performance is broken down by standard so the teacher can see the number of questions about the standard on that test and the number answered correctly or incorrectly using this report a teacher can

019look at class Trends per standard by Looking Down single columns and student Trends by looking across the rows another report available to us is called The Benchmark so distribution report and this is provided by CIP data reports provide prediction tables like the one on the screen for each quarterly Benchmark each year for the Last 5 Years this is a tremendous benefit of using these benchmarks is that they are highly predictive of eventual so success so a teacher could look at this chart and they could determine the percentage possibility the student is likely to pass based on their performance on the benchmarks administrators can look at these tables with teachers and discuss how student scores are distributed and determine who needs remediation so so the chart on this screen is one of those Benchmark distribution charts

020this is for English grade level three but there are charts like this for every tested subject this chart shows student performance from Fall of 2022 benchmarks compared to performance on the spring of the 2023 so exams for this subject a teacher knows that if they can get students to get a score between 61 and 70 then 80% of students who fall in that range have historically passed the so test as you can see the higher students score on benchmarks the greater chance they have to pass the so administrators and teachers can see these tables and begin to make predictions about spring testing this allows them to make adjustments to school plans if a subject department or grade level begins to show signs of needing additional supports or resources administrators and teachers can also work with

021students to set goals for how they will perform on benchmarks so they can feel confident about how how they will ultimately perform on so test at the division level instruction and special special education teams are using division data from CIP reports to tier supports for specific subjects schools or teachers that need additional support supervisors visit schools and meet with departments grade levels or teachers to analyze the reports I just showed you then they determine what supports are needed to help the teacher be successful the instruction team regularly reflects on where we are spending our time so we can maximize our efficiency this year we are especially focused on visibility and feedback to improve the quality of instruction in our classrooms in ela they are providing continued walkthroughs uh and coaching to elementary schools as we

022implement the new reading curriculum Benchmark Advance the supervisor of Elementary reading is working with third through fifth grade elementary principles and teachers to analyze Benchmark data and make plans for remediation of skills most missed in the quarter 1 benchmark the supervisor of secondary reading is doing the same for our middle and high schools both supervisors are also attending common planning and department meetings regularly in math the supervisor of math is meeting and working with Middle School teachers primarily sixth and seventh grade to disaggregate data and make plans on remediating the most missed topics or skills during the second nine weeks walk through observations and feedback in all K12 math classrooms will continue during the second nine weeks attendance and guidance at department meetings and common plannings will continue to be a focus for our middle

023schools and and she will also continue individual teacher meetings to focus on data analysis feedback and alignment of instruction in science the supervisor of science is conducting monthly walkthroughs at Focus schools with low science so performance in the spring after these walkthroughs the documented feedback is provided to the teacher and the administrator at a recent division professional development science supervisor shared best practices for science instruction focused on scientific and Engineering practices and time was provided for teachers to work collaboratively with others from their Zone and plan and share resources in social studies our new super supervisor of humanities began on November the 1st he has already segregated the data and determined Virginia studies standards where students are struggling the most he will be working with teachers to identify resources to help build student skills in

024geography and critical thinking and also to teach test taking skills and help teachers differentiate lessons that help our special education population improve in all core subject areas supervisors are conducting co- teing walkthroughs and giving feedback and support to classrooms for students with disabilities and finally the instruction and special education teams have collaborated to create monthly training opportunities for principles this year a major focus is on high leverage practices High leverage practices are frequently occurring educational practices that all K12 special Educators should know how to do these practices are evidence-based meaning that they reflect effective methods and when they are successfully implemented they can improve results for struggling Learners there are 22 practices and they represent the most important practices that Educators should learn to to use in their educational settings while they especially benefit students

025with disabilities they are practices that will help all students be successful keep in mind that students with disabilities qualify for special education due to the presence of a disability how it impacts them educationally and the need for specially designed instruction in order to to progress in the general curriculum and improve student outcomes additional training has been provided for all special education teachers on specially designed instruction in order to support our students with disabilities one of the high leverage practices that we're looking at is analyzing student learning data in other words effective teachers retain reuse and extend practices that improve student learning and they adjust or they discard those practices that do not so in a recent training led by instruction and special education teams excuse me and a training that will take place next week

026uh the principal reflect on first quarter data and they will receive additional training on how to work with teachers on using the data to improve instruction principles will also look at school level data comparing grades to results on end of year assessments and the goal will be to create awareness of the importance of high expectations for all students now that first quarter benchmarks have been given Division and School staff are focused on responding to what the data tells us again I'd like to emphasize that what we do with the data available is what makes our benchmarks useful Pass rates are just one piece of the puzzle we expect our staff to conduct in-depth item analysis using the reports I just described to plan and make adjustments as the data tells them they need to with

027supports from our division leaders I'll be happy to take questions at this time questions for Dr Trosper Dr M um thank you so much for that report Dr Trosper it was very informative and I'm very glad to hear that we at least seeing positive Trends with our students for Disabilities um you know you're an Adam your item analysis tool and your Mastery by standard those are all just such great tools es you know especially to determine whether students are meeting developing or have emerging skills my question is this um how how are how is this being monitored to know that our principles are in fact doing this or our teachers are doing this and not that this is just available but they are actually several times you use the word the expectation is um so

028how are we sure that this is being monitored and and they are looking at it in the way that you are you have shared with us which I think is is fabulous sure I just want some assurances that in fact everyone knows how to do this and is in fact doing it well as I said we're we're really focusing on our training with our principles and this is the first time we've met since benchmarks have been completed so we're going to take a look at it even closer with our principles this coming uh Tuesday when we meet uh and we're going to break down the data we're going to let them collaborate and talk about how they're uh using the data um one way that we're monitoring is uh we have a division support person

029assigned to each school um and what we've done is we've tried to assign directors um Dr Woodford um Dr Calbert to some of our schools that are especially uh showed concerns and so as we go to leadership meetings we talk to principles um and and we make sure they're using this data we report back to each other when we meet weekly just to talk about how those conversations are going um one example I was at a a recent leadership meeting and they took the prediction tables and they applied them just to their school and they were able to make predictions for what their Pass rates would be um the other thing that we've done is in some of our higher need schools where the students are not performing where we want uh the supervisors for

030special ed and instruction are going to either grade level or department meetings um and the directive that I've given them is to make sure conversations are focused on data uh and I will say I'm proud of our principles because a lot of the ones in these schools that just know they need to progress they are at those meetings um and and they're guiding the discussions they're setting expectations there's there's uh forms that they have to complete to show they're talking about it so um we've got visibility at department meetings leadership meetings and so on uh and then another way that we're doing this is we're actually asking principles for schools that are in in Improvement or in warning uh to come talk to us at the division level um once they get through the first

031quarter benchmarks and then they look at their data and we're going to talk to them and ask pointed questions like what changes have you made what is the data telling you um how were students progressing that that previously have failed to meet expectations and really try to challenge and get answers on uh what they're doing to improve scores and and with the message being if it's not changing then what are we doing different so um again this year and I can only speak for my instruction supervisors we've been as as visible as as we've been um since I've been in this position we've really put a priority on that um I've heard that feedback from principles and we're trying to give that individualized feedback uh just to grow teachers U and get them where they

032want to go great thank you so much also you use the word opportunity several times when you talking about PD that um principes would have the opportunity to attend uh some of these uh sessions that are talking about how to do and and what you're saying and interpret uh data points so um is that an opportunity or is it a requirement for them to attend it's a required uh principal meeting and and I'm assuming that they've looked at it already but that's the purpose for having it is to make sure that we've looked at it so I've asked them to to bring their data to look at it prior to the meeting and then we're going to actually get in there and do some activities some reflection and collaboration so yes those are required uh

033principal meetings monthly okay I have one more question um I love the fact that this gives us such detailed information and again that we're seeing some positive Trends especially with subgroups that were we know are struggling um but I also think it's important to look at the other end of the the um the scale as well so is there anything going on with our children who are um either gifted students or students who are are just academically talented to ensure that you know they are progressing as well so that you know if they score a 500 one year that you know a 505 isn't okay the next year or or a little bit of growth isn't okay that we're really challenging them and trying to get their scores up as high as uh they're able

034to based on their abilities sure one of the changes Miss Boer made she's the supervisor over gifted um in the last few years is she has arranged collaborative time with our gifted teachers across the division and so they meet weekly and they they discuss common strategies and and ways they're working with kids in our schools um one of the positive changes that we're seeing is they're they're treating classes with gifted students almost like you would a co- talk class for students with disabilities and that the gifted teacher is pushing into that class uh and providing that support um that has been really helpful because that tends to raise the bar for all kids um and what we really emphasize is of course there's more face Toof face time with that teacher in elementary but as

035they get into Middle School we really look at the differentiation piece um any kind of feedback we've encouraged our principles to talk to teachers um about what's the difference between your Advanced and general education class um often times unfortunately you'll go into an advanced class and you'll kind of look the same as a as a general class and so that's a a point that we try to challenge our teachers on is to make sure that you make it more rigorous um more critical thinking and Analysis so um she's done a wonderful job collaborating um actually just recently our gifted teachers met with our our with Governor Schools teacher with cbgs just to talk about gifted practices and uh one of the things that their principal has asked those teachers to do is to get gifted

036certified and so we're able to collaborate really looking down the road at where our gifted students will a lot of them will ultimately end up to find out what they're doing so we can work together to improve okay so the so my understanding you say that there is the expectation that we are looking to improve the scores of those children as much as the children who are struggling yes ma'am all right thank you so much I appreciate it and thank you again for your report other questions I do have Miss Harris Dr Cher thank you for such an excellent report I just have one question just for clarity and understanding on my part um on one of your slides here I think it was the division support Slide the high leverage practice can you elaborate

037on that for me um is that something that these practices are they coming from our state department with various types of practices and things that can be used or just elaborate and help me better are similar to what if if you've done any kind of research Marzano where they they do kind of a meta analysis of lots of studies and then they compile the the most effective practices so that's what high leverages are um as you read through them they're nothing new they're what I would call just good oldfashioned teaching things that have worked previously um and it's kind of a part of a back to the basics approach um I I'll give you some examples they're broken down into four categories of collaboration assessment uh social emotional behavior um and then instruction and so

038for instruction a high leverage practice again I'll just read a few there's 22 um identify and prioritize long and short-term learning goals um that's nothing as I said it's nothing new but that's obviously goal setting with students is is really meaningful um systematically designing instruction towards learning goals um adapting curriculum materials and tasks to specialized instruction for those with disabilities um providing scaffolding supports uh using explicit instruction uh and so and there's all kinds of them and and it's it's pretty easy to find but again the evidence uh based on Research over time is brought together and they they've compiled these and um and so what what we've done is we're systematically teaching two to three to our principles asking them to think about what works for their school and then take them back to

039their school um and we've tried to make depressional development just ready made so they can take it right to a staff meeting department meeting and talk to their teachers and so some principles are taking it as is some are spreading it out over a couple of years and some are just looking at their school and thinking well here's what I know they need to work on so yeah but again kind of a back to the basics good it's good it's always good to go back to those Basics thank you Dr TR than any other questions I have a couple Dr Trosper um these benchmarks they were taken one time right either pass or okay and um we all see the Pass rates but what are like how's the grading like go on that is it

040out of 100 questions or like is it like an SAT what what's the ranges there everyone's a little different um I and and there's a whole chart that our teachers have access to I've seen it anywhere from 20 to 40 questions it really depends on the subject and and the value of that is that the decision was made by teachers in multiple multiple School divisions um who who have looked at this repeatedly over the years then gotten feedback from all teachers in each of the divisions so um it it's you like I said between 20 40 That's and I I'd have to verify that but that's what it looks like well the reason why I ask is I'm interested in like you know what it takes to pass M and then okay great we hit

041that but then what are we doing like how what's the percentage of our students that are achieving you know 10 15 20% above that like I want to know that what is our like Excel rate essentially so that's something that would be good and I'm sure we monitor it but it would be good information for us to know as well like hey we got a lot of kids passing but we got to really we really should celebrate the there's a lot of kids that are really doing well so I think that that's an important thing um to look at so that's all I okay any other questions all right thank you Dr trer all right we'll move on to 2.2 school presentations for Boonsboro and Forest Middle School Dr berens yes sir so while Mr

042too comes up and settles himself in just um keeping in the same Lane we've been in for the last several board meetings to help you all as board members and our community be aware of the Strategic work at the school level we're having each of our principls present at a school board meeting to talk about their own schools accomplishments and the goals of their own school's continuous Improvement plan and we're very pleased tonight to welcome Mr John Deo our principal of bomboro elementary school and he'll then be followed by Dr Norman our principal of forest middle school so John have uh should should I stretch that a little more you are you good to go buddy I'm set thank you sir good to see you good evening school board members my name is Johan Deo

043and I am in my third year as principal of Boonsboro Elementary School which serves approximately 330 students in grades K through 5 our vision at Boonsboro elementary school is for all students to reach their full potential and our mission is to build a strong foundation for further education by providing students with opportunities to develop academically socially and emotionally this evening I will share information about our continuous School Improvement plan including celebrations student performance and academic and climate goals I would like to start by sharing some celebrations Boonsboro Elementary is fully accredited earning a school quality indicator of level one for all academic achievement achievement gaps in student engagement and outcomes areas this was only accomplished through the commitment dedication and hard work of our entire staff students and families I am proud to share our

044low chronic absenteeism rate of 5.4% this rate demonstrates that all of our stakeholders value the importance of School attendance through a partnership with the local church we are able to secure funds to furnish a sensory room to meet the varied stimuli of our students multiple students have already utilized this room positively supporting their school experience and as part of the VOE security equipment Grant submitted by the division Boonsboro was awarded funds to add software in our front entryway enhancing the Safety and Security of our staff and students software included a buzzer system with a built-in camera in the vestibule and Aon for each office staff allowing them to see and communicate with visitors before they enter the main office or hallways next I would like to discuss our historical student performance data in continuous School

045Improvement goals for the 2023 2024 school year developing these goals was was a comprehensive process involving the school's leadership team and other instructional staff student performance data over multiple years was analyze allowing us to identify Trends strengths and areas for growth this process guided us to make informed decisions and create school goals that will advance students academically behaviorally and socially before sharing our CIP goals I will provide historical student performance data Assessments in the pal screener this data will also provide context for how we determined our pass rate percentages for this year's goals for so student performance data you will see two data sets one is the raw pass rate the other is the combined pass rate while raw Pass rates do not factor in growth combined rates do for several years the Virginia Department

046of Education has adopted a growth model that factors into school accreditation this growth model ask students to move from one range to the next over the course of the school year and demonstrates their academic advancement and growth which is then factored into school Pass rates here you will see s So reading student performance data for students in grades 3 through 5 over the past 5 years raw Pass rates remain relatively consistent over the past 5 years with the exception of the 2017 school year which yielded a higher pass rate of 88% similarly the combined pass rate percentages have also remained consistent you will notice an NA for the 2016 2017 school year and this is due to the state not having in place a growth measure at this time the next set set of data

047focuses on the Pass rates of our students with disabilities while our raw Pass rates for this subgroup have been low over the past two school years I am pleased with the amount of growth these students have demonstrated which is shown in our combined rate percentages you will see the TS in some boxes and this stands for too small which means we did not have a high enough population of students with disabilities for the state to report results the last reading data slide shows historical Pal's data on the left you will see data representing the percentage of students meeting the sum score Benchmark which has remained steady on the right includes instructional oral reading level performances for the past two school years which again have remained steady but slightly lower than Benchmark results while in years

048past we have focused our attention on some score benchmarks which measure students word recognition and spelling our Focus has shifted the past two school years to their instructional oral reading level which assesses students ability to take meaning from text which is the ultimate goal for our readers we also identified a trend in student performance on these two meas measures with those meeting the instructional oral reading level Benchmark yielding lower results than some score Pass rates as such it was essential to prioritize students instructional oral reading levels so we can align them with the sum score Benchmark results we have developed three reading goals this school year our first goal is that this spring will be for 92% of our grade 3 through 5 students to pass or show needed growth to count as a pass

049on their reading so second is for 75% of our students with disabilities in grades 3 through 5 to pass or show needed growth to count as a pass on their reading so and third is for 75% of our K through2 students to meet or exceed the reading instructional level Benchmark on the screen on the spring pal screening to support and Achieve our reading goals teachers are working to implement the Benchmark Advanced reading program hegr phonological and phic awareness instruction in the utilization of the sundai system reading program for our students with disabilities additionally our reading Center staff and classroom teachers provide daily targeted small group reading instruction and Remediation next moving into math I first want to provide historical Pass rates that helped guide us to set appropriate goals the first data set are s

050Pass rates raw and combined for all students in grades 3 through 5 these Pass rates have remained consist consistent and strong with marks in the ' 80s and 9s for all but one year next are math results for our students with disabilities similar to reading you will see TS indicating this subgroup was too small to report for the given school year the two previous school years show similar raw Pass rates and two combined Pass rates with differences I'm pleased to share that we remain at a level one for this achievement Gap group we have developed two goals for math our first goal is this spring will be for 93% of our grade 3 through 5 students to pass or show needed growth to count as a pass on their math so and our second goal

051is for 75% of our students with disabilities in grades 3 through five to pass or show needed growth to count as a pass on their math so to support and Achieve these goals teachers provide daily explicit system itic and sequential instruction emphasizing problem solving number sense estimation and computation furthermore grade level and vertical teams meet routinely to analyze student performance data to guide and inform instruction and to provide targeted remediation additionally our special education teachers are using a research-based program called moving with math to provide our students with disabilities supplemental instruction our last goal focuses on school climate recognizing the importance of culture climate and safe schools we have a goal to decrease undesirable behaviors on campus starting this school year we implemented a set of schoolwide expectations that promote strong character and productive citizens

052these expectations include being brave optimistic organized motivated encouraging and respectful our goal focuses on these expectations and for each student to earn at least one Eagle ticket per month for demonstrating positive behavior as measured by our schoolwide expectations Matrix to support and achieve this goal our teachers are focusing on responsive classroom practices such as morning meeting and providing Behavior specific praise throughout the day additionally our school counselor is supporting the school through classroom lessons small groups and one-on-one sessions with students further our school counselor has partnered with outside companies to host assemblies on topics such as anti-bullying the valuable and integral work of our division intervention design specialist also supports this schoal these Specialists have worked with students individually on specific behavioral and social skills allowing them increased success in the classroom lastly as a

053school we have fully implemented our schoolwide positive behavioral interventions and supports framework centered around our six schoolwide expectations which have yielded positive results thus far at this time I'll be glad to answer any questions any questions I do have any the Mayo thank you so much for your report and congratulations to both you and the staff for your fully accreditation um you know Boonsboro has held such a long history of academic success for students there and so it's very uh pleasing to know that that's continuing under your leadership um I'd like to know a little bit more about your sensory room that intrigues me so tell me a little bit about what that looks like and which students are using it m so the the student us usage is is varied and and based on

054needs um it's students with disabilities and students that are non-disabled um and it includes um action items such as a trampoline crash pads to get um students with high energy levels get get get um some of that energy out and and fidgeting out um and it also includes different types of fabrics um and bean bags and soft plush toys um and gel floor tiles um to provide kind of a calming area as well and we've we've divided in a sense the sensory room it's um the size of a normal classroom um and we've divided it to where the the high action items are um in one area and then the um calming items are kind of in another area away um and adults bring students there as needed um to utilize the room the time

055can range just based on need and the students behavior at the time um and it's it's yielded really positive results this far for like I said our students with disabilities and our non-disabled students as well right absolutely and so that it's new this year right it is we worked with a a a local church um and through their graciousness they fully funded it um and we we were able to purchase different different items I worked with my special education staff my school counselor um the classroom teachers to to Target high need items for that room and that came to our determination on on what to what to purchase for that room fantastic thank you questions I do um thank you Mr Deo and I also want to offer my congratulations to you and your staff

056um for your accreditation and the hard work you're doing out there and also to your students because they work hard too absolutely um so and I also want to congratulate you for the partnership you developed with the church for the sensory room um and also for your security um I know um when we work together you know nothing trumps security and safety of our students nothing so thank you for for focusing um having a focus on that um I appreciate your reading and your math goals but to help me better understand your goal can you help me understand what the passing rate was for your sped students in reading and math last year like you're saying you you want to set 75% of the students to meet or exceed the score of 200 or demonstrate

057growth on the vertical scale to count as a pass so how much of an increas is that 75% and if you don't have that here that's perfectly go say to say I don't have it here oh absolutely um I I do have that that that data so looking at the 2223 school year so the most recent SOS that the the students took um students with disabilities took last school year we had a uh raw pass rate of 31% our combined rate was 69% for reading so um based on the current goals that we have in place that would be about a 6% increase would be our aim for this school year in Reading with that 75% threshold and then for math um we had yielded better results than than reading for our students with disabilities

058so last school year our raw pass rate for math for students with disabilities was a 54% and our combin rate was a 71% so with that 75 5% um it would be about a 4% increase for for math um in both the well the 75% is a is The Benchmark threshold for level one determination through the vooe Virginia Department of Education for English and then for math it's slightly lower 5 percentage points lower to 70% so our aim is for each of those um subjects for students with disabilities to be at a level one um like I said our math we we were fortunate through the hard work of the teachers and students to earn that level one for math um and then for reading uh we were we we fell slightly to a 69%

059so we were uh a little bit lower than that that level one indicator for uh reading okay thank you um also um what are you most concerned about right now with your your student performance well certainly our students with disabilities is always is always a focus in in accelerating their learning and and getting them um you know on grade level and advancing um you know past past grade level um you know I I would say we're our our students some of our students um are are presenting some behavioral needs which of course impacts um academics we need our students regulated and uh in a positive mindset set for any quality learning um and and teaching to take place so through the hard work of our counselors um our counselor our intervention design specialist we've had

060some support there um responsive classroom really prioritizing um our students um behavioral needs and getting them um better able to focus in class so that's probably one of our biggest focuses right now which will yield positive results in terms of of academics okay thank you and just one more question um again I I really appreciate the partnership you've developed with the church that's willing to support such a a huge project at your school so thank you what church is that North Bedford Baptist Church well thank you to North Bedford Baptist for for their generosity um are you going to also keep specific data with regard to the sensory room to determine how effective it is going to be or was this year when get to the end of the year yes we we do track

061who is using it why they're using it the frequency and which they're using it um and then ultimately kind of looking at all of that and seeing you know is is it being productive and is it being used in a positive manner to decrease um some undesirable Behavior so absolutely okay thank you so much and again you know congratulations to your staff please send them my best we'll do thank you ma'am any other questions yeah I got one okay uh thank you um with that sensory room um you I like what you said you're tracking all that stuff are the parents notified and their if their kids are using that room they they are they are not notified if if they're if they're using that room through throughout the day um some of our students

062with disabilities do have it embedded in their IEP um and even some of our students who are being monitored through our school consultation team as an intervention do have that um embedded as just a break and students with 504 plans um so those um parents and caregivers are understanding that that is an intervention that is used um throughout the day for for the students who need that break and as a parent of a of a child with special needs and an IEP if that would be written into the IEP that would be great I I would I would love that however I would also like to know as a parent that they needed to use the room that day I would like to know that and if any of my other kids needed to use

063that room I would love to know that because maybe there's something going on that I as a parent would need to need to understand so that's how we kind of work together with that so it's just something to think about but I would like to see that and I would I would venture to guess most parents would like to know that as well certainly and and the teachers do on you know daily basis with with some of our unique students they are in frequent communication and provide detailed reports to them um on their their school Happ in good thank you yeah more communication is always better that's how we can solve some problems so thanks any other questions thank you so Mr Hill given the the time seven minutes before six uh we we could

064have Dr Norman get five minutes into his presentation before I taking a break um I think it would better serve the board if he just started from the beginning after we dealt with our 6:00 issues which are recognition of students and staff and public comment but I'll defer to you well at least go ahead and get set up but um are you doing it from there or yeah I would go ahead and get set up um let's see here uh is there anything 7.01 Dr Bergen that you think you can uh apprise us on in six minutes um you just no sir not on 701 um we we certainly could dispense if you would like with 702 and 703 uh 702 is is going to be a f minute item okay let's go for 7

065out2 okay so 702 is the development of the budget calendar um not to be confused with revisions to the current school year but uh next year's next school year we're going to have a u you know a new budget that will develop through the budget finance committee and with the entire school board so there is an attachment to this item in board docs for the uh when when the board would be meeting to look at the budget calendar and I would be happy to take any questions if there are questions about the U proposed dates for the budget calendar in in Mr hagler's absence tonight and this was presented last month correct um since we're taking action on it yes sir it was presented last month do I have a motion uh for the budget

066calendar so move second second okay have a motion and a second any other discussion all those in favor say I I I any opposed all right so moved if you if you'd like to continue with 703 I know Mr perrow is is here in the room with us Tom really there you are will okay so first of all as will makes his way over congratulations to you on your election as the next Treasure of beer County will effective in January will is substituting tonight for Mr Haggler who is with his family in Florida celebrating his father's 80th birthday so good to you Randy and please turn off the streaming and enjoy your family uh Mr per is going to share the results of the recent RFP for bus lease bids Mr bar so put B

067for the bus leases as we do every year um Bank of America was the lowest bidder with a rate of 4. 325 8% and annual payments of $237,200 over what the budget was originally approved for um Mr hegler did run run projections on the transportation category coming in about $32,000 lower than um than the budget so that would cover this uh overage um staff recommends that the school board um award the contract to Bank of America and I believe all of the uh results were in your package for all the other Banks so I know Mr hook you had brought up a question about why are we not purchasing versus financing has that answer been given to you no I was told though it was like 1% interest I'm purchasing sorry on purchasing which I

068mean I know rates are ridiculous now yeah we don't um typically don't purchase full out we spread it out over the year because then it would be about a $1.4 million expense so leasing them over the seven years we get it to about $200,000 um for the budget and not to be disrespectful in any way but just because we've always done done something doesn't mean that's no I completely understand okay so um I'll ask since it's presented is there a motion to approve the bid as opposed Mr shair to what well looking at purchasing out right yes ma'am and I know and the only reason I give that question is because Mr Holbrook did ask that question of you know if we have the money why would we not purchase it and Mr Haggler did

069respond that you know it used to we would have to spread it out and then but then we would get on track of purchasing them so there would be some off-balance of cash but to me personally I don't think we've been given the you know final answer of why we're not purchasing versus agreeing to finance so are you are are you saying you you'd like to receive additional information before making this decision personally would but since it's on here I wanted to see if there was a motion but um I uh asked that question of Mr Haggler and he said that um he will work up an analysis and plan for the upcoming budget it's the will of the board um I'd rather wait I mean if it's a 1.1% interest right I mean we

070need to look into that yeah I say wait I it's you know we're dire need of it do do we know will is it what happens if we don't approve this tonight if we don't approve tonight we will the bids will expire I have to go back through each one and look at their expiration dates but the bids would probably expire and we'd have to reissue bids Mr chairman and so what does that mean exactly if they expire and you'd have to redo the bids how how will that impact us tomorrow tomorrow it would just be that we would have to go back and do that it would just extend the time period out before we would purchase them the original bid document had purchased in mid November so we would just move have to

071move that out okay do we have any buses that are in such um deplorable shape that we couldn't extend the life of those buses um is it going to put our our division in a a worse situation with the bus situation as I don't believe so right off hand I don't I don't have that information in front of me unfortunately but we do have some spare buses that we are able to use but doing this allows us to keep a good Fleet of buses so I don't believe there will be any negative impact immediately but I I can't speak to that without any data or anything in front of me if we were oh I'm sorry Dr do do we so there's no negative impact immediately when your best guess and I know it's a

072guess um when would it could it begin to negatively impact us are we talking two weeks a couple months not till the spring I would have to defer to Mr Haggler about that it just it's a certain process in terms of getting the buses ordered because it takes time for them to be delivered and I believe that the intention was them for them to be delivered or for the contract to be signed in November so I can't I I can help jump in real quick I I've talked to Mr Haggler in depthly about this and we do working with um Billy in the bus garage we do have a cycle that we do need to continue I think the reason because we were going with the the bids that the way they are now um

073was because the budget was not built for that purchaseing outright this year I know Mr Haggler was going to look into that for the upcoming budget but we it's built to continue the lease for this year so that's I think that was why the recommendation was made how long was the lease seven years so so for the the next budget cycle I think Mr Haggler like Mr Daniels said was going to look into that and do we know if there's a penalty should we approve this for the seven-year lease is there a penalty if we pay cash in six months um I would have to go back through the documentation on each bid I don't I don't recall seeing that but I can't speak to it 100% I knew know there's there may be some

074penalty pay ahead penalty you say approve it I say so okay well then I have to have a motion now I think so so um I mean my thought is I I don't want to screw up the bus situation at all AG we can afford yeah okay so I will make a motion um that we accept the Bank of America bid for 1,659 $1 1597 at a rate of 4.32 58% okay we have a motion do I have a second second okay Dr I mean Miss Harrison second all right any other discussion I would just I would like if you could take a look at that and just make sure and just get back to us and let us know if we can there's no prepayment penalty or anything like that we're not in any

075danger of rates I don't think going up anymore I think they're holding for now but um I I think it would be good to take a look at that for sure any other discussion all those in favor say signify by saying I I I any opposed all right passes thank you thank you all right going to our hour of 6m recognition of students and staff Miss Bor all right uh Vice chair and Dr Bergen will you please come forward to greet our students and [Music] staff all right our first group of students and staff being recognized tonight are a part of Jefferson Forest High School yearbook staff work on a student publication is one of the most challenging academic experiences a high school provides students not only learn to write for an authentic audience from

076original research but they Reed training in editing layout and design photography technology skills and business management this project is completely student produced under the training and supervision of an adviser Jefferson Forest High School's 2022 to 2023 yearbook was submitted for entry into the Virginia High School League's publication evaluation service and it was announced recently that it had won the trophy class this is the second year win in a row for the then editor and chief Emma Cooper who couldn't be here tonight because she had an exam at Virginia Tech but let's congratulate the ones who are here for their accomplishments first we have Nora [Applause] Parks we have Ben Young [Applause] House and their adviser Carrie Dodge congratulations almost all my staff is in [Laughter] college [Music] one [Applause] all right the second group of

077students we are celebrating tonight is the forest running club made up of all Forest Middle School students this team ran their hardest in all competitions to prepare for the states the boys club team beat all the other club and middle school teams in Virginia the boys team was led by eighth place finish by bradrick Nelson who also earned All State honors please join me in congratulating the forest running boys club for their first place [Applause] finish nice trophy thank you congratul let's see that let's see that congratulations that's nice all right next is public comment public comment portion of tonight's agenda is limited to 40 minutes speakers are asked to State their name and voting district school board is here to listen to your comments but will not engage or respond to speakers during this

07840-minute period please remember that this is a public meeting and that we expect all speakers to refrain from any foul profane abusive or hateful language during the comments or any time while in attendance during this meeting we also ask that speakers keep their remarks objective and about the school in nature please keep all comments limited to matters related to the public schools and any comments that are harassing or amount to a personal attack against any identifiable individual whether board member or staff or student or having the potential to cause unnecessary delay or disruption to this meeting are prohibited this is a public meeting for public matters if a speaker is not present when their name is called we will proceed with the next name on the list an individual who has not signed up to

079speak may not substitute for that time slot individuals will have four minutes to address the board an alarm will sound when an individual has 30 seconds remaining and a second alarm will sound when the allotted four minutes have expired when this second alarm sounds please discontinue speaking and allow the next person in line to come to the podium should you be un should you be unable to finish your comments please send or give them to Miss Johnson and she will give them to board members please do not adjust the microphone at the podium as it has been positioned for Optimum audio quality Dave dietr ladies and gentlemen I want to revisit the issue of banning books recently we heard yet more clap trap that books are being banned in Bedford County School System although few

080specifics were offered it is obvious that moms for Liberty and other concerned organizations were blamed but where does truth lie let's consider some key facts no one is burning books that was done in Nazi Germany and in France under Louis the 14th it is not being done here in Bedford County Virginia so that ridiculous claim can be dismissed immediately no one is Banning books like was done in the former Soviet Union unless one considers that the left is very busy these days Banning the books and ideas of the western tradition how the left promotes Dei as the left defines those Concepts effectively pushing traditional Western thought on the sideline of Oblivion yet our students have a right to knowledge Discovery and ultimately to Truth where ever truth leads we also have an obligation to serve

081our young to facilitate their Learning and Development both intellectually and morally we are also stewards of the western tradition we have a right and indeed an obligation to defend and share that tradition yet whenever the Western tradition is defended and leftist Views are challenged and even rejected it seems as though we are always met with more protest largely in the form of virtue signaling so I ask on what logical basis should our school curricula transition from Western thought to something decreed by a collectivist minority faction that ostensively protest ban books but all along essentially bans books itself thank you thank you Jonathan Knight good evening uh again my name is Jonathan Knight um this week I was elected to the Bedford County School Board uh to serve as the representative for district one and I

082just wanted to take this opportunity to um introduce myself I'm also here to say thank you to the uh current board members those that are um that will continue in the next term and those that are stepping away um I appreciate your service to to your community and especially to the students of Beford County as a parent and a newly elected board member uh I'm I'm grateful that honorable people such as yourself were willing to step out and step up for what you think is right um and what is true and and to do that in a time where um that can be more difficult than ever so I thank you all for what you've done over the last few years uh to the people of the community that got out and vote and and

083voted this week and to those that supported me personally I thank you uh I do not take this responsibility that uh you granted me to me lightly I promise to be an ear and a voice for the students parents teachers and administration uh of Beford County as we all work together for a common goal which is to give the students of beer County the best opportunities possible thank you thank you thank you that is all that was signed up do we have anyone that wants to speak good evening my name is Isaiah Knight and um I wanted to talk about a post on Twitter from Libs of Tik Tock that was discussing our school system I just simply wanted to read that scoop seventh grader at Bedford County Public Schools were given a coloring assignment

084based on their gender including gender neutral a parent confronted the principal and recorded the conversation which we reviewed the principal can be heard responding quote some students are still identifying their gender and we're trying to be inclusive the teacher's response was that she likes to quote get to know my students in different ways than other people always do why are seventh graders getting coloring assignments why are teachers suggesting to 13-year-olds that they can be gender neutral I think those are excellent questions along with the question as to why those individuals are still employed we saw the election just a couple days ago and voters are asking the same question thank you all right we have other time slots is there anyone else that would like to speak okay chairperson Hill uh members of the board

085Dr Bergen and BCPS Administration uh I'm Stuart Gibbs I'm in District 5 I'm the head coach of Jefferson Forest cross country and as you just saw I'm also the head coach of the forest running club uh I've taught in Bedford County for 17 years of my teaching career I currently teach 11th grade apus history here at JF and I've coached the cross country team here for three years uh first of all I just want to thank you uh the board for honoring our athletes today uh one of the things that they were most excited about after they won the state championship is was was being recognized at school so not only to be recognized at school by Dr Norman but also to be recognized by the school board was a huge deal for them uh

086so why am I speaking uh I would like to ask the board to fund Middle School cross country for the 2425 uh school year uh in the superintendent's budget in for 2022 and 2023 CrossCountry funding was included uh but it ended up being pulled out of the final budget that was passed by the board uh so I'm asking that for next year that you would fund Middle School cross country uh what is cross country uh simply put it's an endurance running sport our high schoolers run 5Ks and our Middle School run 4K uh cross country is one of the few sports that does not have any cuts and is open to those of different ability levels it's also a very financially accessible sport for families uh it does not require kids to have played on

087any kind of expensive club team uh in order to make a spot on the team uh all that athlete needs to run cross country is to show up with running shoes and athletic clothes uh Jefferson Forest cross country has a very long history of success going back to uh Hall of Fame coach coach ly many of you if you've been around a long time you are familiar with Coach ly uh JF cross country has won five state championships uh which I know is the most for an athletic sport here at Jefferson Forest but as far as I can tell it's also the most for any athletic sport in bford County uh the boys and the girls teams are perennial State contenders uh our teams have gone to States almost every year for the past 30

088years uh in fact this Saturday our boys team and two of our female athletes will be uh participating in the state championship in leeburg Virginia uh also not only has Jefferson Forest had success in cross country of but Liberty high schools girls cross country team our favorites to win state championship this Saturday and also at Stanton River Jack wed uh their top male runner he will also be participating uh in the state championship on this Saturday uh as of right now in the seminal District uh Bedford County is the only county that does not have Middle School running Sports uh which puts our athletes at a great disadvantage compared uh to those other schools uh not only are our athletes not eligible to run in semal District meets at the middle school level uh for

089which there are a lot of which are free for our kids to participate in uh also they lose out on those years of training in Middle School uh I did a poll of all of our Varsity Runners so we have eight Runners on a varsity team and um of our Varsity Runners 15 out of the 16 started running in Middle School uh so that just shows you the importance of those formative Middle School years uh we have been running the forest running club 4 the past six years uh under the uh direction of the JF cross country Co coaching staff and we have also had parent volunteers as well to step in and help with this and the program has had a lot of success uh culminating with this year's state championship and we've done

090all of this uh with just parents helping out paying a small fee and by doing fundraisers with the high school team so I thank you again for this time just to speak to you about this I know some of our athletes want to talk as well about their experience and I encourage you for next year's budget uh to add in Middle School cross country thank you thank [Applause] you all right have another open slot if anyone is interested in speaking up to your kids up to your kids hello everyone uh my name is Alex Jordan I'm a senior at Jefferson Forest High School and I'm in voting district 4 um I was lucky enough to run under Jefferson Forest Middle School when they were a part of the high school team and to be quite

091frankly uh this program has changed my life in many ways uh as a seventh grader going into the sport I was hanging out I was hanging out with the not greatest kids and uh when I came into the sport uh there were leaders on the high school team who showed me discipline and responsibility and how to follow through in things and always get work done and how I follow through in life and I don't think without that um I would be where I am in life today and I'm very grateful for the program when I saw the program was cuffing the budget it hurt me uh because even though the force running club is with our team they cannot practice with us every single day and they can't come to meets with us so they

092are unable to be with the high schoolers and we are unable to teach them the things that I was taught as a middle schooler that I've carried through with me today and um they have still done great today as you can tell they won state titles and everything however I sadly have not been able to build that bond that I was hoping to build however like I said they've still done great things and I know that money rules the world and money makes the world go around and it wasn't part of the budget I ask that you please put that in the budget as a small small insertion as it doesn't take much money and I know it doesn't generate much money because you know it's cross country it's not football or anything but uh

093it changed my life and I'm sure it changed everybody everybody's life over there in that corner and those young prospects I want them to grow up and they can uh Inspire the young thank you thank you how are we on time on the um M Johnson we have 40 minutes allotted do we have time for any other speakers yes okay have another open slot uh good evening my name is Jeremy sink the athletic director here at Jefferson Forest High School I want to commend coach Gibbs and their entire um program both from the Middle School all the way through the high school and how much work they put into it I will tell you something very brief that a lot of people don't know uh this this summer we started a JF leadership uh in

094unity Council here on campus and we have anywhere from 26 to 28 um athletes non-athletes uh activity folks theater folks band folks come out on Thursdays during the summer to work out here and basically fix things that we can fix here on campus ourselves anything from just good oldfashioned um Melville Greece hard work uh painting uh grabbing and growling and just doing things that need to be done and I will tell you that three at least three of those folks one was a state champion one was a state runner up and our Luke Alex and Zo all showed up to do various things on Thursdays during the summer I know the hottest day of the summer Zoe and Luke were out there painting the uh the the JF logo on the side of the hill

095and Alex was amongst the crew that was crawling around underneath the bleachers and clipping and picking up trash and uh just an amazing group of young people um and I look forward to seeing them in the future appreciate y'all thank you thank you one more okay anyone else like to speak anybody does Zoe need some encouragement come on you can do it I think somebody had a big signing day in front of cameras yesterday anyway right they're going to do it together Caroline hello I'm Caroline I'm zo um we're two of the varsity girls that are seniors this year graduating and we also would like to put our voice out for getting funding for the Middle School um we both started in 7th grade and I would say at least for me that like a

096lot of my running and what I've learned now and do now I can attribute that back to middle school so Zoe I'd say with my story I was a big soccer player when I started I was in all the travel stuff and the back and forth of all over the place so I think for me I probably wouldn't even be here if we didn't have the middle school program because that's like what fully pulled me over to run and kind of what showed me what was possible to start with so I think it really contributes to the buildup and the training as far as that goes and honestly honly like I think a lot of the varc athletes as gies was saying is a part of the middle school program originally so we've got a

097lot of a lot of five years eight years so I think it's really really important for us to have the middle school program and I think also like just looking at all the other big programs that contend with us or beat us in States I think if you list blackburg West arml who else Charlottesville I think they all have big middle school programs I know blackburg has like 80 people on their squad so I think overall like the start of a program starts from the bottom so just like if you have a big base working up I think that's how you really build a program and I think the teams that have the bigger numbers really come out on top so I think it's really important for us to build it up and it's not

098even just about I think middle school for me wasn't even just about learning how to run and the fundamentals of that it's learning like the leadership skills that you need once you get to high school um so please like when you think about this don't just think of it as just running or just like going out to do a fast 4K it's so much more about building like relationship with people um and if you've seen our Middle School like our Middle School boys like shout out to them they're awesome and they can do really great things but like they're going to be coming up and then who's going to be left after them so just think about that more the feature of like the high school teams if you want us to keep doing good

099and going to States like we need the foundation for that so thank you we've got time for three more anybody else want to speak all right just don't fall you're good you're good awesome thank El Bo um I'm Jen Duncan I live in District 4 I'm a mom of a varsity cross country Runner she is the one Runner that did not do Middle School um and so I really just want to I Echo everything everyone has said but I do want to add in addition to what Caroline said about leadership um this program it's it stands on pillars of tenacity passion um these these pillars but I think the big thing I found with running in general is it it takes some of the anxiety away from the these kids so we talk about the

100sensory room we talked about earlier we talk about these these kids that have you know Suicidal Tendencies in high school the the running program that I've seen has for for my family has taken away that anxiety and so I just wanted to mention that as well I think building you know we talk about nutrition in schools we talk about um giving these kids other things to focus on um to stay out of trouble running I don't know if any of you have been runners in your life um clearly I'm not cuz I'm out of breath running down here um no I I used to be but it um it really um I I think having been around these kids and seeing them it takes some of those stressors away and to be able to have

101that program have a schoolf funded program have a paid coach to do that with a whole Community surrounding an AR thriving program is so so important so it's not just about a state- winning team it's not about just beating blackburg it's about developing a community of Youth that's healthy that gets this life skill whether it's running walking doing a 5k being a good leader um and again in addition to what they're already getting in this great education um in this County so thank you thank you for your consideration thank you [Applause] anyone else hello I am Alysa Keith and I thought I would give another parent perspective as well um I believe I'm in District 4 I live near Jen um so um as a parent of four students who attend three different Bedford County

102Schools um three of whom have run for forest Run Club in the past one of them was able to run for the varsity team this year um I just wanted to add my support to coach Gibb's points on the reasons why we would request that you fund the forest Run Club um so we began the forest Run Club my daughter began running the forest friend club during Co when she thought she wanted to play one of the local team sports and she tried it for two weeks and then that team was shut down because of Co and so she had the opportunity to try running um as a runner myself I was very excited I thought that was a great idea um but what it ended up giving to her was much more than just

103running but it gave her she was in seventh grade at the time it gave her the leadership the mentorship that Alex mentioned that Zoe and Caroline mentioned as well she was able to uh gain some confidence and get some of those skills that you need as you are growing through adolescence um from the leadership that got from the high schoolers who were just unbelievably kind to her as a seventh grader um my son was one of the ones who came up earlier today he was able to join a group of people who accepted him uh they're all weird in their own special way all together um but I also was able to host uh the sixth and seventh graders at my house when we realized they weren't able to run with the high school team

104and so when we we realized they weren't able to practice this with the high school team I invited them to come to my house so that they could continue running and what I saw was parents who are willing to pick their kids up from school and drive them to my house and then I would Mark A Course in my neighborhood I live in Farmington so I got them on the sidewalks um and these kids just ran and ran and ran I would say okay you need to run three miles they'd say can we run five miles um but they would joke and they would laugh and they would play games and I wish you could have seen this Middle School state championship so there's like hundreds of middle school kids and our kids are there

105and like these boys are running so fast to beat the other kids and they cross the finish line and they drop to their knees and like throw up and it's really great um I highly recommend it um but what I see is building of a community for these kids for kids who um are always welcome on this team so like coach Gibbs said there's no Cuts everybody is welcome you are welcome to run you get on the start line and you can be part of a team while also reaching your individual goals so um I just wanted to contribute my voice as a parent and also as the part-time Middle School coach um requesting that you fund the middle school team for this upcoming year thank you thank you we have time for one more

106anybody else all right hello um I'm Luke Gaylor senior at JF uh I'm Andrew Johnson Junior JF I'm District 4 um so as my my name is mentioned before but um this is my sixth year with um JF cross country um and all six years uh we've kind of built on this on this program we built with our um this team is as be has become a family at this point in my life as a senior I've uh all these people that I've we've carried each other through our life through our senior year and now looking back um you kind of realize how important that um early experience with uh discipline and dedication to something that um I've applied to different aspects of my life and um so funding this middle school program uh is

107really really critical for the future of their High School careers and their college careers and so they'll apply it to their the future of their life and um these things that you don't forget about your high school experience um are developed in this program and um so I could I couldn't be more uh thankful for um the friends that I have um this now family that we have together and we uh always support each other and uh are dedicated to this so it's very critical at this point in their life to uh have this so that's all I got um my name is Andrew uh my seventh grade year I got to run for uh the middle school program when it was funded uh it was a great experience um like Alex said having the

108mentors around you uh we had the older senior guys um Jed Dudley and many of them uh they were able to like shape me into who I am now um and then my eighth grade year uh we weren't able to have the uh middle school program because of coid um so I actually got to experience the forest running club and just even though you're still with the team you're not part of it you're not able to have that mentorship or um like I uh the the team surrounding you even though they're part of uh the team uh some days were're not able to practice get together and uh you're you're losing out on that shaping uh early in their career and um yeah I guess that's it uh uh please please fund the the program

109thank you thank you [Applause] guys all right that completes tonight's public comment time uh we will go back uh to Dr Norman uh for uh school presentations for Forest Middle School good evening board members I'm Donnie Norman principal of Forest Middle School I'm excited to share with you tonight just a few of the great things that are happening at Force middle at FMS we are focused on preparing Future Ready Cavaliers and youve evidenced that tonight on the the many seniors that started in eighth grade on this track program as you can see in both our vision and mission of the school we are striving to engage our school Community to support the individual growth and success of all students this aligns directly with this board's vision of building citizens and promoting success both have one

110common focus our students every decision I make as a principal of Forest Middle School is based on what is in the best interest of students this evening I will share an overview of our celebrations The Continuous School Improvement goals a little bit B of our historical data and the schoolwide initiatives that support academic Improvement but before I do that I would like to thank the board and the executive staff for allowing me to be a part of this great educational Community I was hired by the first principal Emily Helms in 1994 at Forest Middle School as I as I have transitioned from teacher to administrator I have been fortunate to spend 30 years in this County making a difference in the lives of our students as we reflect on the 2223 school year I very

111proud of the work that our staff has put into supporting the growth of our students these are just a few pictures that provide a small snapshot of many exciting opportunities offered at FMS in these photos you see our students supporting the Forest Community their participation in the Middle School sports program The Thrill of their first field trip of the Year our national spelling be Contender and our guest visitor from De sat News 13 for earth science students lastly the repurposing of building materials from 1993 to help our school beautification efforts we took the weightbearing Rock from the original building now called the flattop building and filled our parking lot Islands sorry I pressed the wrong button there we go as you can tell by the list of student successes we have many our eighth grade

112students participated in the plant the moon challenge the creation of Club Day last year continues to have a positive impact on the culture and climate of Forest Middle School and our students continue to thrive in extracurricular activities like Athletics band and chor through our newly added CTE class technology of robotic design a drone competition team was developed last summer FMS sponsored a robotics camp and 128 students from area schools in Central Virginia came of FMS and participated in learning more about the future of technology and our Su success didn't conclude at the end of last year we have already had students quote graduate from our sixth grade exploratory mock medical school awarding one of our adapted PE students The Golden Shoe award for his participation in vied as well as students and teachers both participating

113and learning more about safety in the classroom I am proud to announce that Force Middle School is fully accredited we will continue to focus on the success of all students with a specific focus on our students with disabilities in the areas of English and math as well as the school culture and climate focusing on the well well-being of the whole child as I now transition to speak to you about our comprehensive School Improvement plan I would like to share with you several data points and then each of the three Improvement goals with our data and our strategies for academic support the faculty and staff starting on week one took a deep dive into our data and identified the strengths and weaknesses of all students but specifically identified those needing additional interventions my leadership team then

114began to work on areas of support for both teachers and students and that is what I would like to share with you now reading goal one the first goal is for all students to improve their reading proficiency with a concentrated effort to improve the performance of our students with disabilities as the historical data and current academ academic data shows the drop in our overall pass rate has been minimal since pre pandemic from an 87 to 84 we have moved from a level three red in 2122 up to a level two yellow in 2223 as every school does we will still have improvements to make with a focus on the learning gaps among our students and making up for the time their instruction was impacted by the pandemic we have three strategies that we implemented last

115year and will continue to utilize this year since we showed growth they are targeted professional development for our teachers and effective co- teing methods the second would be to continue to use our system for diving into Data regularly using both the state division and teacher common assessments to guide our instruction and lastly to instill the use of high leverage practices among all of our teachers this is essential in reaching every student every day the second goal established by the leadership team is for all students to improve their math proficiency again with a targeted approach to supporting and improving the performance of our students with disabilities as a historical and current academic academic data shows we had a more significant drop in our overall pass rate especially with our students with disabilities the overall drop went

116from an 89 to an 84% but what we are genuinely focusing on right now is the significant decrease with our students with disabilities going from a 77 to a 50 which immediately put us in a level two monitoring with the state go back sorry during the 2223 school year the heavy emphasis on reading and writing interventions showed growth and success we are now working towards taking that same approach in the math content area the implementation of targeted targeting both content areas with intervention strategies High leverage practices and cross-curricular instruction is a goal that all staff members at Forest Middle School are working on and supporting once again we have several strategies that we will utilize this school year teachers will utilize the Data Tracking System that is offered through the assessment platform Mastery connect additionally

117they will disaggregate data that is received through the comprehensive instructional program we will also complete a student observation instructional round as we did last year with our students with disabilities in the area of reading and use the same model this year in the area of math this will assist us in determining the high leverage practices that need to be emphasized our final goal of the csip is to strengthen the school climate and culture that enhances the experiences of learning for all students we are focused on Curbing discipline increasing positive referrals and focusing on building relationships between teachers and students and the school and our families our data shows that FMS had 159 Behavior incidents last year that impeded academic progress and we want to reduce that number by at least 10% we also had chronic

118absente rate of 88.7% Which is higher than our usual four or 5% but still within the state guidelines our goal is to keep students engaged in the learning process to be ready for their educational experience which is next for them and that is high school the three strategies that we focused on to help improve our climate and our culture and safety of F in us are this a vigorous parental involvement program support from our school counseling and intervention Divi Divine specialist teams to help with the well-being of our students and finally encouraging fomo for all of our students and that refers to the fear of missing out that will keep them engaged at FMS and that's one of the reasons this year we moved our clubs dates till Monday we wanted Monday to be an

119important day of the week for our students who want to come back to school after Friday so we focused this year in using clubs on Mondays and it's been great so far as I close this presentation I want to share with you a statement that is on the wall of one of our classrooms and I quote in case no one told you today hello you're doing great you belong here I believe in you you're loved sadly my faculty and staff started our year off with a loss one of our beloved special education teachers Miss Sierra sharpener unexpectedly passed away in the summer at her home in New York this statement is still posted on the classroom wall that she worked in for two years we hold this statement up as a reminder that every student

120who walks to the de's doors of Forest Middle School has various needs and every student who walks to the doors of FMS we are to believe in and love thank you again for letting me share our story and questions I'm sorry any questions for Dr Norman all right um hi Dr Norman hi did you call on me or miss I did did okay sorry um thank you for that report I really appreciate the time you took and thank you for to your staff for your full accreditation and all the work they do and your students because they're the ones doing the work um with your goals um you stated in your goals that um all students will approve their reading proficiency is measured by an overall increase in the school's pass rate so tell me

121how you're going to measure that like is an improvement one point or how how have you determined what an improvement would be yes ma'am so we're always shooting for the goal of 70% uh except for in Reading 75% pass rate based on the state standards and we use the information that we glean from benchmarks to track that initially to see where we're going um I have that information that I can share with you later but not with me it's very very good so far in math and English um and Science and in social studies so we track that along the way and then as a leadership team uh dive that into the data every time we meet to make sure that we're focused and that we're as teachers are doing what they're say they're doing

122in the classrooms okay you also talked about decreasing your failure rate so how many students are we talking about when you decrease your fa failure rate which is a much easier goal to reach yes ma'am well in our students with disabilities last year there's there's several um formulas that the state accepts and last year we were able to get a reduction in failure rate um which is a 10% it's C r10 you know that year a principal um and we're going to do the same thing this year because our numbers are 68 that we have students with disabilities that we focus on um and it's pretty even through the three grades so that I think that's our best way to get um move us from yellow to Red um that's our I mean I'm yellow

123to Green sorry wrong way yellow green sorry um but that's what we're going to do and um like I said in my statement we are doing some student observations um in classrooms where there's collaboration going we're going to look at the math this year last year we looked at reading to see how students are interacting and it's it's something that was real successful last year um and we took that information and made changes and you speak about the student observations you said the leadership team is going to uh complete these student engagement observations so and then you go on to say they will determine which high leverage practices and strategies should be implemented so how is the classroom teacher involved in that process that's a great question um we I choose a math teacher and

124a sped teacher and I like last year we sent um them into a whole day of of observations they knew what sped kids were in the classroom but the special education kids didn't know they were in there for them and so they had a uh set of questions and observation look fors um the high leverage practice that Dr Trosper had you know this is something we implemented this year the 22 so far we've worked on six of this semester so they're going to look at that as well and see about you know the collaboration teacher engagement and um how the is explicit teaching things of that nature when they're in the classroom for that short time so um you said you took a deep dive into the data and you were working on did did

125I just understand you correctly six of the higher level higher leverage practices so and I'm sorry did you tell me what they were and I I did not to say that I memorize which one it's on a nice PowerPoint that I can share with you but we we as my admin team we decided this is what we need we wanted to start with uh the executive staff gave us some flexibility on how we implemented that um we it was great this summer when we had our admin conference having that um giv us flexibility and that's what's working for vorest middle school right now um so we're going to continue on that track okay and I'm G to ask you the same question I asked Mr Deo what do you what is your or one of

126your your biggest concerns at this moment my biggest concern um this year I have um 68 students with disabilities I also have 55 African-American students that are lower in math than they should be and so we kept an item last year so we're going to focus on them as well okay thank you so much and again uh congratulations to to you and your staff thank you other questions for Dr Norman yes Miss hariston just wanted to congratulations Dr Norman on your long B in bord County as well as your schools accreditation so good to you um I really appreciated the in-depth picture that you painted for us in terms of your goals that you've Set uh for your school but I would like for you to elaborate a little bit about your parent involvement uh

127you indicate here that you have call logs so can you just tell me a little bit more about that is it the expectation from you to your staff your teachers that they to call parents on a regular basis and for what reasons would they call well they we try to encourage and as long as I've been doing this this is a difficult task if if teachers would make a positive call it's so much easier to make the negative call and we haven't quite made that transition but those who do that is it gives great rewards um so we we always contact parent with a discipline or anything like that or D's and Fs um we have uh great intervention designs specialist room this year very similar to Mr Deo it's actually two rooms one's therapeutic

128and one's academic um and like Mr Daniel said I think that's a great idea to kind of notify parents if they're in there but um that's what we're doing to support um our students and teachers but we're going to we always track what's going on with data and can you repeat what you said I want to go back to what you said so I was just and you're headed in the right direction in terms of answering my question I just wanted to fully understand how your teachers okay uh are utilizing the the call logs correct well call logs go several ways for D's and Fs or if there's a classroom management problem or it's a positive call so teachers as part of their um exit interview when we talk about their call logs they bring

129that with them it's usually through emails a lot because that's what people respond to now but the phone I always find much more effective in my in my practice MH yes ma'am okay thank you you're welcome any other questions for Dr Norman thank you sir yes sir all right moving on to uh informational items 3.01 program of studies Dr Bergen yes Mr Hill thank you tonight board members we're going to be sharing with you the proposed changes to the program of studies for next school year the 2425 school year a copy of the proposed program of studies is attached to this item within bardocks uh on the next to this agenda item as is the case each year the instruction team meets with our principles and our counselors to receive feedback on any needed changes

130the proposed changes for next year include a few course deletions modifications as well as additions and some editorial changes mainly with boarding and formatting in the document itself s the approval of the program of studies will be on the board's agenda for next month so that we can begin our course registrations uh per our calendar in January I'd now like to turn this presentation over to Dr Trosper who's going to be providing some more detail for you on the proposed changes in particular some of those new courses which we are proposing to implement next school year Dr trar thank you I'm just going to do a quick overview of some of the new courses we're proposing some revisions just some uh minor changes uh before I start that I just wanted to mention that over

131the last two years we've proposed 24 new courses in our program of studies 16 of those were CTE courses so we've done a lot of work over the last few years don't have as many this evening um but as always this programmer studies creating is a collaborative process as Dr Bergen said with principles counselors teachers content Specialists and division level staff I would like to say a special thanks to Mrs Susan Hassett she is the library pair professional at Liberty High School uh and has a tremendous gift for for proofreading editing she enjoys that I asked if she would proofread it this year and she did a phenomenal job um she she is also one of the nicest people you will ever meet so if you ever go to Liberty High School please please uh

132introduce yourself to her it'll make your day a little bit better but I do want to say a special thanks to miss Hassett um our goal this year as we created the program of studies was really to help have a better understanding of the programmer studies to all who use it uh and that includes our families and also to really focus on successful implementation of the science and social study sequences that we began last year and we're going to have fully implemented this year so first of all in social studies you'll see that World Geography will be offered to 8th grade students and world history one will be offered to ninth grade students um and so that will complete the transition to e8th grade World Geography uh nth grade world history 1 uh now what

133I I do want to mention something if in the draft that you have right now it shows that World Geography is actually not for high school credit we've had some discussions and we've decided to offer that as a high school credit even though they'll take it in eighth grade uh the reason for that is if a student uh is is not coming to high school with just a few high school credits it makes it really difficult for them to go to Susie Gibson and also achieve an advanced diploma so we felt like if we if we did not allow them to have high school credit that was going to limit some opportunities so uh when you vote in December this that minor change that will not be just a middle school course it will be

134for high school credit um in science in 8th grade they will take physical science and they will be tested on the 8th grade science so earth science will now move to the high school and students will take that as an elective after either biology or environmental science and so as far as the new courses we're introducing we have six new courses and four CTE uh in grades seven and eight we're going to offer uh intermediate Chorus for students uh in uh grades 11 we're going to offer college US history so students can take us history for for a dual enrollment credit and for our CTE courses the first one's going to be entertainment design and technology and this is an interesting course because as we're trying to get more and more students to have CTE

135completers this course might appeal to some students that are in Fine Arts who maybe didn't get um a completer in the past and so we think as a CTE class that might attract some of our fine art students uh we're going to offer marketing management uh to our students in grades 11 and 12 which again is just another completer option for our students we're going to offer Sports and entertainment management to students in grades 11 and 12 and this is another marketing class but as the name suggests it's more focused on students who are interested in sports and then finally ecology and Environmental Management for students in grades 9 through 12 and this is going to be part of an agriculture um sequence and this actually is going to complete with other similar courses and

136really strengthens an already robust agriculture program and uh and so those are the new courses be there's some revisions uh previously when a student sign up for AP Government their senior year they would take apus government in politics and comparative government in the same year uh what we've done after talking to our social studies teachers our history uh excuse me our our administrators we've decided to separate those out into two different courses so now when a student signs up for AP Government they will only take apus government and that course will take the entire school year and if they want to take comparative go that would be another course another elective they would take um and so that's just the the revisions and then the course removals uh we we are going to remove Applied

137Mathematics data science and American Sign Language this is just due to to low enrollment consistently um we have a lot of math options these are just options students haven't really chosen so uh we're just going to remove those uh and then just some minor updates we did do an updated description of diploma seals uh to match doe updates on their web page uh we have updated description of s sols that will be implemented uh next year we're going to have new s so's in English history and math so a lot of changes coming from the doe there uh we updated our description of the locally awarded verified credit opportunities that students can use to get credit in high school history we've updated expectations for AP teacher training and recommended prerequisites for students who take AP

138classes um we've we've added a description of our expectations for students who take du enrollment courses off campus um when that they do independently apart from Bedford County and then finally we we' added a description of the Virginia literacy act which is going to go into effect next year so uh that's just a quick overview of of the program of studies so I'll be happy to take questions questions for Dr trer any questions so maybe I missed it Dr trer but is there like a summary page of what you just read I did not post one but I I can certainly provide that if that would help to me it would be helpful um but yeah yeah okay okay okay you guys okay with asking for that okay yeah I I'd like a quick summary

139um and just trying to understand what we're adding than what we're taking away um and I don't want to make assumptions but I heard you say you've talked to teachers and administrators was there any concerns over removing anything that we're removing no no and that's the one of the things our content supervisors do is they meet with Department chairs and they get their input um and again a lot of our courses offered are driven by student enrollment and just some of the ones are kids are not signing up for so this didn't really take away opportunities kids wanted okay and anything that we're adding will be available at all three campuses not necessarily that just depends on certification yeah yeah so that's I would like to say we could but you know certification student enrollment

140uh it just it really up to each school but it is available for kids to sign up and then we'll see where the numbers fall okay if we can offer that okay any other questions all right thank you sir all right uh moving to 3.02 2024 2025 school calendar Dr Bergen yes sir so tonight we're going to be sharing for information a proposed calendar for next school year the 2425 school year so of course will come back next month for your approval um you're going to be hearing in the presentation from Dr Woodford uh this evening that we've changed the process board members for the development of the calendar to increase um input on what the community is looking for in the calendar rather than develop a calendar and then ask people to vote on

141options uh so we've received quite a bit of of upfront input which you're going to hear about from Dr Woodford in this process we have used that input to develop a calendar that we believe meets most if not all of what the community is requesting and we are trying to get this in front of you tonight and approval for next month so that staff and families can make their plans for next school year around the school calendar so Dr Woodford we'll turn it over to you good evening members of the board um tonight I want to share the proposed calendar for the 2425 school year um as Dr Bergen mentioned the development of this calendar was done much differently than calendars in the past years therefore I'd like to just share the process we used

142and explain some of the features in our proposed calendar for tonight um first of all in the development of any school calendar there are a lot of required elements that must be worked into the draft that we would consider non-negotiables the first is that the state requires us to have 180 instructional days for students um those 180 days do for us have to start after August 1st due to some payroll considerations and budget considerations um in addition we have a contract with the uh Liberty University um to graduate on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend they hold that spot for us for years to come um and we actually talked to L about moving that date and there are no other dates available so um unless we change venues we're really locked into Memorial weekend

143which in a lot of ways is nice for our seniors and families because they have that Monday off with traveling um also Liberty University really the size the parking the convenience of using Devon Center has really been important to um our staff and our students and our parents so we feel like that's something we need to honor and stick to um there are also things that are just important to teachers and staff such as uh the need for professional development um we always end our first semester prior to Winter Break um this is due to uh the giving us the ability to finalize our midterm exams in high school so that our students don't have to come back from winter break and take finals for the semester we also know that our teachers need work

144days throughout the year so part of our work on this calendar was determining teacher and staff requests through a survey that I'm going to share more about in a moment um and just as you all know not every desire can um be worked into a school calendar so what our team did was try to honor as much as we could within the parameters of requirements and requests um as a reminder just how we did our past calendars as Dr Bergen said um our uh instructional team would develop three or four calendar options working around all the things mentioned in the prior slide um and then we would ask staff to vote on their favorite calendar there were some concerns related to that process um because it really boiled down to what we heard with staff

145feeling like they really didn't have a voice voice um we would send the dress out we would ask for the vote we would have low responses um in a lot of uh years um and there really aren't a lot of options available um so a lot of times staff were just picking the calendar with the shortest number of days in the year which would then cause issues with not being able to have work days and professional development days so our new process began really in the fall of last school year and it has three main components that I'd like to share with you first were listening events that occurred last fall and that have occurred this fall um the development of a calendar committee and the work that they did and then a final consideration

146by the committee trying to honor what we had learned in our work as a group together um for the last two years the School administration office staff have gone to every school in the fall to hold listening events um staff can meet with School administration office staff that's our directors our supervisors our executive staff um and provide feedback on anything that they feel like need some input at the division level we welcome suggestions ideas concerns during these events we've received a lot of feedback on calendar needs the largest feedback was that um we need more professional development days um at and at least one work day at the end of each nine weeks so that teachers could work on grades and preparing for the next quarter um and a lot of teachers made that suggestion

147that they'd like to bring a calendar committee back um to work on options and that way they felt like they could be represented um through the committee's work finally many said that they just don't vote um they just look at the options and they figure somebody else is voting so they they're just not that interested in doing it through a voting option so um with that suggestion um of looking at a committee I sent out a request to all schools for volunteers to serve on a calendar committee we had 19 staff members volunteer and um 12 were selected and the reason for that was I was trying to get equal numbers in each Zone equal representatives from groups um and equal numbers of high school middle school and Elementary School teachers um at the first

148meeting the committee shared all the things that staff felt were important we asked them to reach out to staff and get suggestions we had a long discussion about how to really gather feedback from everyone that was meaningful so everyone felt like they had a voice uh we knew that everyone wants time off they needed work days and they need time for professional development so our task was to try to see how to make that happen um our team decided to focus on looking into to three different task that they felt were important um there was interest in researching a yearr round model of schools to see if there was a major advantage um to moving to year round school for staff students and parents um the second team wanted to really look at the current

149calendar to see if they could tweak it to make it better um so that they could use that as a model for future calendars and then the third team worked on developing a survey to staff to gain important um input on calendar development prior to us trying to create a draft each group spent several weeks working on their task and then returned to share information with the group um I will say the group looking into the yearround options found a variety of data for and against yearround options um and so at this time we just really felt that this that discussion should be tabled since we are still trying to recover staff morale since the pandemic and any major change of this magnitude would really need a lot of feedback from parents a lot of

150feedback from staff and a lot of feedback from Community um and so it really would take several years to implement and we were not sure at this point if there would be a huge advantage to year round school so that group had a lot of research but decided we really needed to hold on that um and then the team that was working on tweaking the C Cal for a model realized how difficult it was to get everything they wanted into a school calendar and they agreed with the third team that a survey really needed to be created so I am going to share some feedback um that we received through our survey and that we did try to incorporate for the most part into our draft that we are presenting tonight um so one of

151our questions uh to teachers and to it it was really to staff we had 74 43 responses from all different staff we sent it to everyone um and we just asked them if we were to offer more holidays off like President's Day or Veterans Day would you be willing to work additional days before or at the end of the school year seven 67% said no so that gave us a good indication we weren't going to try to add holidays then we asked for um staff to prioritize how they would want different parts of the calendar to look so the first one was how would you want the first week of school to look um for students the first week year with students um teachers said they really wanted to start with students on a Wednesday

152or their second priority would be to start on a Thursday to have a shorter week so that then they have time to recover over the weekend change anything that needs to be changed really quickly to get started the next full week we then asked them to prioritize what openhouse options should look at we had a long discussion about should openhouse be in work week should it be after the teachers have gotten to know kids a little bit better but after surveying the priority was really just to leave it as it was in that um back to school week for teachers and students coming in with their parents from 12: to 7: um the second priority if we couldn't make that happen was just to make that um open house shorter in time and then the

153third priority was to consider doing it after two weeks in school again to give um teachers time to get to know their students um next we asked them to prioritize the conference day because there was a lot of discussion about they um teachers felt like the conference day was too late in the first semester um and um so in our discussion the priority was to keep it in second semester just like we do now um and the second priority um especially for our elementary teachers was to move it back um to closer to the end of quarter 1 so that they had time to give their concerns to parents a little bit sooner um the next one we asked about was to prioritize the length of breaks what was it most important was it most

154important to have two weeks off for Christmas most important to have three days for Thanksgiving so you can see there the priority was two weeks at Christmas with the cave that they would really like a first day back just to be a work day for teachers without students so they can get prepared and the second priority two weeks at Christmas then the full week at Spring break and then finally the three days at Thanksgiving um we also discussed two our early releases which we had removed from the calendar a few years ago um because of concerns with Transportation but um after talking with Mr Haggler and Dr cornette we thought well let's let's see if we added some back in what would that look like um so teachers felt like if they were going to

155get toour early releases they would really prioritize them at the end of a grading period or consideration for having them once a month um also we asked them how they felt about when to offer professional development um we know we need three or four days for professional development throughout the year and so we asked them to really rank their preference for that their um top priority was go ahead and doing that one full day back um when they came back for work week and then two other days during the school year um and I think that really was because they realized by not having that day this year which was something we got from our listening events there were a lot of things that were introduced that they didn't have time to have professional development

156on until September um so they really thought going back to having a PD day during their first work week was important or having a full day each quarter or once a month during an early dismissal time so with these priorities um we created two drafts for the calendar committee to consider and really I'd have to say the only true difference were start and end days for the year um and so after discussion the committee felt that the final proposed calendar was the strongest and that is what you see on board docs and I just want to highlight um the major things we were able to do in this calendar um so each Year's calendar can be less or more appealing really based on certain holidays and the days they fall on for instance for this

157calendar and the 20125 school year Memorial Day falls early on May the 26th and next year it falls on May the 25th so that means that our seniors need to graduate in order to be able ble to have their graduation or Memorial weekend but students still need to return in grades kindergarten through 11 for just two or three days to finish out that 180 day requirement um but when we get to year 2627 Memorial Day is actually on May the 31st which is really late in the calendar year so that's going to help our calendar year just fall perfectly um so with that being said the final calendar has these Fe teachers uh new teachers will start working on Friday and Monday so their two work days are Friday the 2nd and Monday the 5th

158then all teachers and staff will return on uh Tuesday August the 6th we did add a professional development day back into the work week schedule um school does start on a Tuesday uh no matter how I try to arrange it that Wednesday Thursday start day for school uh for students just would not work to make everything else work um again um that would at least give them a little bit of a delay start so kids come on Tuesday they have just four days before they can make some adjustments we did put additional professional development days in uh September and November for a total of three professional development days um we removed the professional development day that we typically have in the spring like in February or March because a lot of times we end up

159cancelling it because of snow if we have snow or we need to get those PD days in earlier if we're starting new initiatives so we just felt like it was better to frontload those in the first semester we have added teacher work days to the end of the first and the third quarter um and the third quarter uh work day is a virtual day uh based on feedback from the board board in the resolution two teacher work days should be virtual so one of those will be at the third quarter um we also add in an additional work day on November the 5th which is also virtual and that's an election day and of course this coming year it's going to be a presidential election uh so allowing teachers to work at home would be

160beneficial to keep the parking lots um low with cars um also based on the way the winter holiday was falling uh we opted for a 2-hour early dismissal on the last day prior to Winter Holiday to give teachers some time to work on grades prior to leaving for winter break um I will say we did consider a work day in January when um teachers came back but again the way the holiday falls to give two full weeks at Christmas um that would mean that the teachers to have that workday would have to come back in on a Friday um to do that work day which I did not think was too appealing at the end of winter break um or students would have to start on Tuesday January the 7th which is really difficult for

161parents having that late of kids coming back because it's just not falling on the on the New Year holiday correctly so we opted for a 2-hour early dismissal um it probably isn't our you know it won't be the most favored but at at least we are giving teachers some time we did move the parent teacher conference day back in the calendar um closer to the end of the first quarter so teachers could meet with parents quicker um and I'm happy to say staff and students will still get three days at Christmas two full weeks at Christmas and a whole week for Spring Break um again I just want to make sure that you do see in this calendar that in order for seniors to graduate prior to May the 24th which is the Saturday of

162Memorial weekend weekend they'll finish on Friday the 23rd but students in kindergarten through 11th grades will return on Tuesday and Wednesday after the Memorial holiday to complete the 180 days of instruction um with teachers finalizing their workday on that Thursday and that Friday for the end of the year and I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have at this time uh any questions Dr me I just have a comment thank you for those additional PD days I know that was really hard on you all um and thank you for hoping that we're ever going to get snow in Virginia [Laughter] again I want to sort of echo some of the same sentiments from Dr mey but you know I just think the process listening to you Dr wher explained how you really involved

163uh there the staff the teachers in this decision making uh to me was just uh you're to be commended in your team for that um maybe you know you're restricted with the holidays and all there's not a lot you can do with those days you know but uh kudos to you all any other questions y thank you I appreciate the hard work um teachers and staff were involved in in the survey yes it was so the survey was sent to every employee in Bedford County okay so anyone who works for us had input on the calendar um and we also let principles know to make sure that their cafeteria staff knew it was out there that their bus drivers knew it was out there we asked um our transportation supervisor to make sure the they

164don't often check their email and it went out as a Google survey so it was available and we felt like we really had pretty good turn back with 753 employees 753 out of how many 1,500 okay so which is definitely more than we've had in the voting for options in the past sure sure yeah okay good so that that worked out were parents asked um no and um that is a very good question I knew you were going to ask me um obviously we have a lot of parents who are employees but we didn't have a parent sitting on the committee and that was just an oversight on my part um again because I think we we all are kind of thinking about parents with holidays and asking parents to have additional days where they're

165having to find babysitters and things like that so that is something that I will correct when we get back together for this school year for sure yeah and you know I know this past year we had days after Memorial Day and we cut them and that that's fine but I'd like to not do that in the future but that being said if we have class we have kids up to 11th grade grade coming after Memorial Day chronic absenteeism is a problem and I would bet on those two days we don't see a major problem so okay yeah I know the end of the year not a lot happens but that's two instructional days that we're missing out on my preference would be to try to find them somewhere even if it's half days for something

166half day and I don't know how professional development works or teacher work days if there's ways to sneak that in yeah scrape my seniors off but I got to make sure that I'm back or I have to delay a vacation because of that so that and plus those two instructional days are important if they're in the middle of the year that's they're going to get it's like the meat and potatoes so I mean quite honestly I would like to see that if I'm going to approve um a calendar and I know it's tough but that that's just where I'm at I've heard from a lot of U of parents today um I guess they know that they they do uh pay attention to bardocks so they knew that was coming out so um yeah I

167heard from a lot so I just wanted to provide that feedback okay can just a impromptu question then for your board members the 180 days that we reference there's a caveat the state requires 990 hours or 180 days and I did anticipating some of this discussion I checked in with my regional colleagues there are other school divisions in the region that don't plan 180-day calendar because we far exceed the 990 required hours which is why we were able to to remove some of those days last year by board action because I could still certify we had exceeded 990 hours I'm not comfortable planning a calendar with fewer than 180 days of instruction our students need all the instruction they can get and I'm balancing that in my own mind in front of you when you

168say really don't want to have to wipe days off after Memorial Day we can wipe them off in planning of the calendar the risk we run is now that one of our colleagues has asked for snow to return to Virginia is it'll happen that year because we have built-in snow days so if we if we don't me 990 hours because there's significant snowfall then we have to make very unfavorable choices of lengthening the school year lengthening the school day considering Saturday school which I would never propose in a million years so we we try to give you a calendar that gives us cushion 990 hours but we can yeah but we can meet the 990 hours without coming back after Memorial Day is the long short of it if that's the will of the board

169okay you had a question yeah I would much rather see um us be completely done um Before Memorial Day and that's what I've been getting concerned from parents as well um because travel um they've already planned vacations and stuff for Memorial Day so they're not their kids aren't going to be in school anyway so that was one of the concerns that you know I spoke with Chris about that like chronic absenteeism nobody's going to show up those last two days of school so we're going to have a huge issue so I would much rather vote on a calendar where everything is is completely done by Memorial Day so if we were to go that way and I'm fine I would make two suggestions I would say we shorten the Thanksgiving holiday to Thursday Friday that

170gives us one day which may not be you know parent friendly either and one of the teacher work days um at the end of the first quarter it would really we would use it on that virtual day on Election Day we added a teacher work day to give teachers more time but um we could pull that additional workday out to get out by that Friday so those are some options that we're exceeding the hours right now right now we are exceeding the hours right now my only concern is academically we're still struggling so to take that 180 days I would rather I would rather take it in the calendar to try to find it but yes we do exceed the 990 hours and I would say you you know you know the Wednesday before Thanksgiving

171right that's what you're saying Wednesday Thursday Friday could do a half day there too I mean there's there's there's several options and when is early dismissal on a on a half day I know it varies on the school it's two hours prior to the end of the school day depends on Elementary it's you just back it up to for all right thank you any other questions so Dr Woodford just thinking outside of the box sure um are there any opportunities for virtual learning days where we can include those two last days for our students to either do community service or some type of virtual learning I mean we've got lots of learning opportunity outside of our buildings uh in our County and so I don't know if there's any state standards that allow us to

172do that after after Co the they really tightened up on Virtual learning days um and I don't know Dr Bergen if you but I I'm I think they are not allowing excessive virtual learning days um I would have to look into that our students don't participate well on Virtual learning days so it's kind of the same you know is it chronic absenteeism or is it you're everyone's missing a day and um yeah well and that's why I'm trying to be creative with those last two days because we've heard from parents and and teachers kids aren't coming those last two days even if it's on the calendar and they don't I'll I'm just going to throw out the last week of school is kind of the same I mean honestly I whatever the last days of

173school are we start to get absentee as so what is it that the state will allow us to do outside of tradition that will allow attendance to be counted if it's virtual or some type of outside you know activity that parents can say Yep this is what my kid did on these two days and maybe I'm living in a another world but I just want to know what the options are if we can shorten those two days to not be in school but possibly virtual days of some type of activity or if it's online you know they go and have to watch a certain thing whatever it is for us to be able to count it as a full day we need to know what those those guidelines are from the state I mean I

174think it's worth looking at just as far as feedback so okay any other questions I just have one comment um and I do I heard from parents too I do understand that but as an educator um virtual days aren't great lots of kids are going to say you know the kids who don't show up you know at school are going to be the same kids who say oh we didn't have an internet internet access that day and I think what the Board needs to continue to consider is that our students are behind still from coid so every day in school matters it's not a day where you don't do something important um you do have activities that last day that last week of school like field days which are important for the social emotional and

175physical health of our children so I understand where parents are coming from they don't like that um I I wouldn't either but by the same token I think it's not about the parents and it's not about the teachers it's about our students okay I will um if you all are okay um I could tweak what I've got get your answer about the virtual learning send that uh to the board in a Wednesday memo next week with see if I can figure out how to get us out before that on that Friday before Memorial Day um um and then um I can I'd probably want to get feedback from you to see if all of you are okay with it because then it would be for vote next month are are is everyone okay with that

176if I'm just communicating with you yes one more question sure the teacher has told me that there's no such thing is a stupid question so I'm going to ask it there is no such thing yes so 990 hours is the requirement is that requirement the same for seniors so um for high school credit courses it's n um 40 seed hours 990 hours for everyone yes here's what we what what we say though we certify that we have a calendar of 180 school days but we know those seniors have their credits and they have their 990 hours so many school divisions do this where their seniors graduate and then other students continue to come come for a few days um for the same reason we're proposing it just because of the the way the days are

177falling so Wonder it's not it's not a a dumb question at all so yeah most of our seniors are finishing up exams if they have to even take exams they finished their so test they've got their graduation requirement so it's easier for them yeah thank you yeah they don't come anyway as Dr C said any other questions thank you all right thank you Dr Woodford moving on to 3.03 policy updates Dr Bergen yes sir the intergovernmental Affairs committee met on the 24th of October to reviews proposed revisions to eight policies and as always the complete Redline versions can be accessed uh through the link within the agenda on board docs I'll just give a very brief summary of what the proposed changes are for these eight policies they include BCE Schoolboard committees this policy was

178was reviewed uh and given proposed edits for policy bdd which I'll be speaking about next regarding remote participation there were no changes being recommended to the policy but we reviewed BCE with the committee because bdd electronic participation in meetings from remote locations has proposed edits that would allow for the use of individual remote participation or all virtual public meeting for any standing committee or subcommittee or other entities designated by the board uh while it's not in our policy currently our practice has been uh for some of our board members who serve at the standing committee level to phone in and participate which would be considered remote participation for personal reasons that occur during the the day of the meeting policy GC professional staff proposed updates include the addition of language to allow for extension on

179threeyear provisional licenses for a teacher and the ability to recommend a waiver of certain lure requirements for an individual seeking employment as a Career and Technical teacher proposed changes to GD gdg support staff probationary period there were no changes other than updates to the cross references within the policy IG BG offsite instructional and virtual courses the only update is a change in the title of nurse practitioner to advanced practice registered nurse and this very technical change is due to changes in state code and making sure our policies match state code policy ikf the Virginia Assessment program and graduation requirements proposed updates to the policy would allow for flexibility on graduation requirements Mr Daniels for students uh from fam serving in the armed forces who are often required to relocate between states policy JH CB student

180immunizations there are no changes proposed uh to this policy other than that very technical change in job title that I shared with you on igb and lastly policy Leb Advanced alternative courses for credit uh the proposed policy language has uh been added to permit students to exceed a full High School course load when participating in courses offered by an instit tion of higher education that lead to a degree or certificate or credential at such institution again uh complete Redline versions can be accessed online that is a brief summary of the eight policies I'm certainly open to answering any questions or the two members of the board who serve on the committee any questions questions all right thank you all right we'll move on to additional action item 7.01 Schoolboard meeting calendar this was presented last

181month uh we feel questions at that time as Regarding why some of the locations are indicated the way they are so tonight we're just asking for your approval of the dates so that we can advertise our our public uh meeting dates for the school board and um some of those September October November will be filled in with the location once we have a better understanding of the use of the high schools in their auditoriums okay do we have a motion to approve the 2024 25 school board's meeting calendar as Pres presented so move we have a motion do I have a second second have a second by Dr mey any discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I I any opposed motion passes all right 704 approval of State literary loan application resolution

182Dr Bergen yes so the literary loan which was established by the state constitution allows for construction loans to schools at a very low interest rate and given the current market the rate for this application at 3% would provide substantial savings for the county over a 20-year repayment schedule the deadline for submitting a loan application is next Thursday the 16th of November the resolution which is attached to this agenda item in board dos has a total request of 28,6 187,000 for three separate projects that include the improvements to the canopies and auditorium at Stanton River likewise improvements to the canopies and auditorium at Liberty High School and the addition of a gymnasium at Bedford primary both the school board and the Board of Supervisors are required to pass resolutions in order for the school division to

183apply for a literary loan the Board of Supervisors were asked to consider a similar resolution as on tonight's agenda their meeting was Monday November 6 I attended that meeting with Mrs Kirby and fielded questions from members of the Board of Supervisors and then they then unanimously passed a resolution to allow the school division to apply for this literary loan I just want to emphasize that this resolution before you tonight is only seeking permission for the division to apply for the loan there is a cap of $200 million on this fund so depending on the number of school divisions who apply there's certainly no guarantee that our application will even be approved however An approved application would provide a funding plan for the unsolicited ppea which we have been having discussions about for those same improvements

184at Liberty High santon River and Bedford primary if if that information didn't provide you enough on the purpose of the resolution I'm certainly happy to answer any questions that I might be able to questions do I have a motion to approve the approval of State literary loan application resolution as presented so so moved okay got Mr Daniels with a motion do I have a second second second by Dr mey any discussion oh was it Miss Harriston Miss Harriston I'm Sorry Miss Harrison a second by Miss Harriston any discussion all right all of those in favor signify by saying I I any opposed right motion passes uh 7.05 approval of policy updates presented at the October 12th 2023 board meeting Dr Bergen I have no new information to share we reviewed uh this information last month

185it's just up for Action all right do I have a motion to uh for the approval of policy updates presented at the October 12th 2023 board meeting so moved all right Mr Daniels motion by Mr Daniels do I have a second second second by Mr Nelms any discussion all right all of those in favor signify by saying I I any opposed motion passes all right uh on to eight superintendent report Dr Bergen thank you Mr Hill uh before we proceed from slide one and go on to the accomplishments of our students and staff I do have several key updates I'd like to share with you board members first of all we had a a lot of discussion here tonight about the needs of special education students and their accomplishments on benchmark assessments and on so

186assessments and the challenges here in Bedford County are identical to the challenges in every other School Division in the common wealth and in the country in terms of how to best educate and assess our special education students so as was shared with you several weeks ago I was personally asked by Dr Coons our state superintendent of instruction if I would serve on a Statewide work group for special education the work group that Dr Coons has assembled includes several superintendents along with other individuals across the state in central support positions Teachers Community Service Partners and parents we had our first meeting as a work group on the 30th of October at which time we reviewed a number of important topics and agreed that we needed to have further discussion over the course of this school year

187on these topics including first recruitment retention and professional development for teachers second highquality instruction for all students third the importance of inclusive classroom environments fourth postsecondary opportunities for our students with disabilities fifth parental engagement in the process C and six improvements for monitoring and support from the Virginia Department of Education yesterday I attended our own special education advisory committee meeting so that I could solicit uh feedback from our own members here in bford County on these topics and ask for the input on any additional topics to which they provideed me some feedback and I'll carry those uh those recommendations back to the state work group and continue to update you as this work group unfolds uh next several weeks ago I had the opportunity to attend the annual fall conference for the Virginia Association of

188school superintendents otherwise known as vas and at the conference uh superintendents received updates directly from secretary gadir as well as from Dr Coons on a number of topics including the recommendations of a different work group that was established through House Bill 585 passed by the 2022 for General general assembly of the Commonwealth to help position Virginia to be a national leader with State assessments so in summary beginning with the 2425 school year we can expect revised and more rigorous s sols that include a crosswalk with the national assessment of educational progress otherwise known as nape or the nation's report card and in addition there will likely be a new assessment platform that provides for more problem based questions that require students to explain their thinking rather than simply choose from uh four choices and we

189might anticipate higher cut scores on so assessments as well as a continued focus on both proficiency and growth and ensuring that all of our Educators and our parents and our students have access to actionable data that can be used to improve student outcomes so tonight you know we've talked with you about uh new assessment material materials or or new instructional materials that we've implemented particularly in uh English language arts last year for our secondary schools and this year for our elementary schools and we' talked with you tonight about more rigorous benchmark assessments I think the combination of the new materials that which are more rigorous and the quarterly assessments which are more rigorous are going to make us well poised as a School Division for more rigorous s sols and so Assessments in the coming

190years my next update concerns revisions to our operating budget for this school year uh we still need to have some discussion so next Friday on the 17th of November Mr Haggler and I are going to be meeting with this board's budget and finance committee to review proposed changes to this year's operating budget you might recall from our last update we are receiving and we have now the C tool and know how much money we are receiving in addition it is approximately $5 million the share of that a 3.3 million is earmarked for the Allin plan from Governor yunan uh our Allin plan has been submitted is approved and is on the vdoe website regarding the remaining 1.7 million of the increase in state funding outside of the all-in plan we're required to use part of

191that or about a half a million towards a 2% increase for all s soq funded positions that leaves about 1.2 million uh allocated that we'll disc discussed with the budget and finance committee and it'll certainly be our recommendation that we use that money to pay for the state share on the 2% rise for S soq funded positions and then provide a 2% increase for all of our employees s soq or otherwise after we reviewed those recommendations with budget and finance next week we'll be prepared to have a more in-depth conversation with all of you at a special called work session later this month on Monday November uh next on the Slate of policies that were included tonight for information one policy IG BG regarding off-site instruction in Virtual courses has a statement in it that

192students May apply to participate in Virtual programs either full-time or part-time through the school board's remote learning option and as we were reviewing the policy with Mr Hill and Mr Daniels uh we shared that we're no longer using virtual Virginia for our full-time virtual students and the question was asked was this a change that we had not shared with the board previously and it is and so uh let me share with you as we did with the committee members our high schools do continue to have access to Virtual Virginia courses on a select basis as needed for students who have already started in and they have they're a Singleton and they need to have a course to to complete and it's offered through virtual Virginia however our full-time virtual students for this year we switched

193uh to Ed options which which is a product of edmentum the switch from virtual Virginia to Ed options for full-time virtual students uh was for a number of key reasons first and foremost cost efficiency it's just less than virtual Virginia courses however the level of content is much more rigorous uh it also allows for the inclusion of live instruction as well as asynchronous instruction tailored to individual students and it's allows for yearround open enrollment which is particularly important for students who are assigned by the hearing officer in midyear to the alternative education center so it does not disrupt their schedule and we can put them into Ed options and continue to instruct them in that way as well as for students who need homebound instruction so uh with those updates aside let's continue now on

194as we traditionally do and celebrate the accomplishments of our students and staff we're going to get a running head start on tonight's Celebrations by congratulating Jack W from Stanton River High School in addition to winning the Blue Ridge District cross country meet Jack was named Blue Ridge District Runner of the Year congratulations to you jack on this outstanding accomplishment and as pictured on the right hand side of this slide Stanton River wasn't the only school with fast Runners this season the Liberty High School boys cross country team clenched the 2A District title this season and went on to compete at regionals congratulations to these young men for such uh out standing achievement this season as well as all the forest Runners that were with us here tonight earlier from running the trails to running a

195show our students never ceased to amaze me with their talents the Liberty High School FFA Club had a big win at the Hub Federation forestry contest the team competed against other FFA teams in the area to identify trees forestry tools and equipment formulate a Timber stand and complete a compass course they then went on to compete at the South Ridge area event at ferrystone State Park competing against other chapters and won their Federation contest and took home second place congratulations to our Liberty FFA students and their sponsors and as pictured on the right hand side of this slide Jefferson Forest Cavalier theater competed in the Virginia Theater Association conference this month and brought home many accomplishments including JFS one act play the green bird made an appearance in the VTA finals placing fourth in the

196state across all classes both public and private best actor recognition and best costumes in the state and the tech team locked in their first ever first place finish in the Statewide Tech Olympics and five of the auditioning seniors combined for over 70 call backs from colleges congratulations to our JF thespians and their sponsors the celebrations continue to the field with all three marching bands and their recent achievements the Liberty marching Minute Men took grand champion at the Cavalier classic for the small band portion of the program at this Regional Invitational the marching Minutemen brought home three first place Awards and four second place Awards when I went into the office at at Liberty High School last week there were trophies all over the countertop they're just so proud of their men and men the Jefferson

197Force marching Cavaliers also had another fantastic season this year performing their show Alchemy they placed first in in class four and five at the caval Cade of bands held on the 7th of October they also placed first in their class and second overall at the Tidewater Regional held in Virginia Beach on October 14th and they were the grand champion sweeping first place in all captions at the drums along the Blue Ridge competition on the 21st of October finally then at the October 28th vmbc championships the marching Cavaliers placed third in their class in preliminary and seventh out of 34 bands overall in the finals and not to be outplayed the Stanton River marching golden eagles ended their competition season on a sweet note at the Blue Ridge Festival of bands where they earned first place

198in Color Guard first place drum major second place percussion second place marching and second place overall in class 1a we're just so proud of all three of our high schools and our marching band students congr congratulations on all of your accomplishments our students shine in athletics and academics because they have the best teachers and staff educating them if you've been following our division Facebook page you've seen the individuals on this slide as we feature them uh as their school's representative for this school year's teacher of the year we've been highlighting several teachers each week and have just a few more to Showcase before we announce the selection of the top three for Bedford County in the meantime each of these individuals are to be in congratulated individually for being selected by their te peers as

199the teacher of the year for their school our school staff are not the only ones that can nominate uh a colleague or a fantastic teacher or a fantastic anyone who works for us for recognition we encourage everyone in our community to nominate Any teacher or staff member for recognition as one of bedford's best it was my pleasure to surprise Taylor cafro at Liberty High School in front of her students and Aaron Brammer at Stewartsville Elementary School in her classroom through the generous donations of the Bedford area Educational Foundation both of these outstanding teachers were presented with a gift card and an exclusive bedford's best coffee mug if you would like to nominate someone because of the difference they make in your students life please visit our website or our social media channels and submit a

200nomination last month on the 19th of October we celebrated our outstanding bus drivers and other Transportation staff employees during bus driver appreciation day it goes without saying we simply cannot operate our schools without our dedicated Transportation team members we offer you our sincere thanks for helping our students make it to school and back home safely again each day as pictured on the right a bus recruitment event was held last month and we had a tremendous response from the community with individuals showing up interested in joining our transportation team those applicants were able to drive a school bus in the parking lot at Liberty High School uh under the guidance of one of our bus driver trainers and then they were invited to come inside for coffee and donuts and meet on site with HR staff

201and transportation leaders to get a jump start on the hiring process a very big thank you to all of the staff members pictured here on this slide and others for their time in planning the event and for coming out on Saturday to support the event uh we have been able to hire quite a few new Transportation employees because of this of this event in addition to recognizing our student successes and showing our appreciation for teachers and staff I'd also like to raise awareness for some other special causes uh that occurred during the month of October including students across the division participating in bullying prevention month students showed their support to stand up against bullying through Unity chains by wearing orange on Unity Day by participating in lessons on taking responsibility for your feelings and on

202planned spirit days to stomp out bullying also as pictured on the right in the spirit of unification staff members from the town from the county and from the schools came together on the 20th of October in Centertown Park so that together we could paint the town pink for breast cancer awareness month and let survivors as well as family members who have lost lost loved ones know that they have our support we also celebrated Diversity Awareness Month throughout the month of October students celebrated inclusivity and raised awareness throughout the division by participating in classroom lessons to learn more about the accomplishments of individuals with disabilities and by holding fundraisers for local charitable organizations such as craveables and Alex's Lemonade Stand also in support of disability awareness month and in partnership with Special Olympics ipcs the fourth

203annual little feet meet was held at Liberty High School on the 26th of October we spent the morning celebrating and encouraging these little athletes in Friendly competition and I was honored to escort the a athletes in the ceremonial lighting of the torch this day is always so much fun for the athletes and the students and their families and the community and plans are already underway for the big feet meet which will be held next spring and we'll be sure to invite you and please come out and join us and celebrate our our um special needs students last month our high school students had another opportunity to participate in Bedford one which as the acronym says offers new experiences for students to learn about local businesses and is a collaboration between the Bedford County Economic Development

204Office The Economic Development Authority Central Virginia Community College and of course Bedford County Public Schools the students on this tour first toured Southern Air's Fab shop where they could learn more about the HVAC industry including paid internships and apprenticeships and the second stop on the tour was to interspect Technologies where they learned more about non-destructive testing and other advanced technology students are able to sign up for these uh industry tours through their career coaches in their high schools and speaking of of economic development at the request of the of the board I did check in with the Bedford County Economic Development Office and the town of Bedford who are instrumental in attracting new businesses and residents to Bedford County recent Economic Development news includes the development at the New London Business and Technology Center the

205expansion of Parkland direct a high volume lithographic print and custom envelope manufacturer propos zoning changes in the town to stimulate both employment and residential opportunities that include modernizing downtown and the development of two new apartment buildings including a 130 unit complex on Independence Boulevard and 60 units that will be within the renovated Bedford Middle School this coming Saturday November 11th is Veterans Day of course it'll be observed on Friday the 10th of November nationally this federal holiday is observed each year to commemorate the cessation of hostilities between between the Allied Nations and Germany on the 11th Hour of the 11th day of the 11th month and was first observed on November 11th 1938 in addition to preserving the historical significance of the date Veterans Day helps us to focus our attention on all of America's

206veterans student drivers at all three of our high schools have received this week complimentary car flags and are being encouraged to proudly display those flags on their vehicles tomorrow in recognition of Veterans Day we would like to again thank Ken and Linda Parker with the Bedford Boys tribute Center for organizing this effort as well as the Bedford American Legion Post 54 the national D-Day Memorial and the Bedford Welcome Center for their partnership and collecting donations from the community this is just one way that our students can honor our service men and women for their patriotism love of country and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the common good on this slide are few informational items that are important for the board and our parents and other community members in Bedford County First our student artwork

207will be featured at the bower Center at various times this school year beginning with our youngest students on November 14th through 18th will include a special reception on the evening of the 16th of November please check our social media sites for additional details about these planned student art exhibitions and I certainly would encourage you to come out and see see the good work of our young artists also pictured on the right as we approach winter weather we'd like to remind our students parents and staff about our inclement weather codes we've simplified the list to just four codes to indicate when students and staff should or should not report to school uh as a result of inclement weather a listing of these codes as they appear on this slide are featured in the second edition of

208the superintendent's newsletter which is posted on our division website and that same information is also available on our division Facebook page and finally here are the three things you need to know as stated earlier the teachers of the year for each school have been chosen and the teacher of the year selection committee has met and reviewed all of the nominations to select the top three most deserving teachers we will be announcing those finalists during school visits so stay tuned we'll be posting pictures and names of those three finalists on our division website and social media channels in the coming weeks next seems like just yesterday the school year started but Thanksgiving break is just around the corner remember schools and offices will be closed from Wednesday November 22 through Friday November 24 students and staff

209will return to school on the 27th of November a Monday and likely will be a few pounds heavier after eating all of those Delicious Pies pictured on this slide and lastly the Virginia Department of Education celebrates take your legislature to school each fall I've been working with the board's intergovernmental Affairs committee members and we will be inviting State delegates and Senators both those newly elected as well as those returning to join the IG committee members and members of the Board of Supervisors to visit schools on the 1st of December where they will be interacting with students and staff and Mr Hill this concludes my super intendent comments thank you Matters from the board uh committee reports Miss hariston uh yes um Mr chairman um the Laural school board will not meet until December the 7th

210so we haven't had a meeting since I last reported and the facility committee we met on October the 19th not really a meeting but we just kind of had like a field day where we uh went out to the high school and just kind of TI a look at the parking lot there and uh I will ref for any questions that you all may have to Mr hobok regarding um that conversation that we had okay and that's all regarding the facility committee and the Laurel School right Dr mey um we have an upcoming Finance meeting but other than that there's nothing else to report from last month Mr hook like M Harrison said we had a meeting on October 19th with a Paving contractor out at Liberty High School and um he gave us whatever

211some options and no decisions have been made I mean this is a project that's going to have to be done during the summer anyhow so it's not a rush and he was the first one to come out and really give an estimate on the on the ceiling so as far as I know we're going to get some more estimates and then make a decision before summer move forward with it that's it okay Mr Nels um I was unable to make the CG committee due to a meeting conflict but I think Dr Bergen attended I did do you have any updates uh from that meeting uh they were included uh most of the updates were included in my presentation here tonight yeah Mr Daniel um there was a cak meeting last night I was unable to

212attend Dr Bergen um just let us know about that and then um IG we meet later this month on the 28 okay and uh for me uh the GH school does not meet again until December so I don't have any updates on that and then we were supposed to meet um um this week for the um oh my gosh the um mine is gone blank uh Susan cash is the director I am so sorry stem stem Academy I could not get in my brain uh we were supposed to meet this week but she has asked for us to uh push it out uh until December and I don't have those results yet but if if the board does not agree it will be on November 14th so uh that's my committer reports all right comments

213and concerns from school board members Mr Daniels all right um first off happy Veterans Day um thank you to all those who have served um goes without stating that uh we are forever in your debt so thank you um for that um thank you to the Board of Supervisors for uh unanimously um you know allowing us to with their resolution to move forward with that low interest loan uh everyone keep praying that make sure that we get that that would be uh just fantastic uh we heard a lot tonight about running in cross country and um you know I I think that uh I mean there was a lot of passion um in the room everyone was super genuine and um it's it seems like it's changed a lot of lives here in Bedford County

214not just for Jefferson Forest but we've heard from Stanton you know about Stanton River and also the Liberty zone so it it seems like it's it's something that we should all be considering as we move into the budget uh for next year takes a lot of discipline responsibility hard work dedication and teamwork I have tried to run and uh I am not great at that so I I will stick to what I'm good at but I know that all those students are really good at it so um it was also great to hear from so many um in public comment um to hear a lot of positive comments so I I I enjoyed that and I'm sure we'll all look into that and I'm sure other other board members are going to have stuff to

215say about that but that is it for me okay Mr Nels I'm just going to Echo um happy Veterans Day um and then I'm going to put in another plug Dr Bergen I don't know how many people did we get for bus drivers because I know we're still having some issues with um buses not um yeah we had uh Josh you were cting we were so excited how many was 18 were there that day and they went in and fed out the application and now they're in the pipeline uh with studying for their uh state required test and being trained by our bus driver so we can have more substitutes on hand awesome awesome that's all I got I'm I don't have to do the shamess plug today no com Dr mey uh yes um

216first I want to wish a Happy Thanksgiving to everybody I hope you get to spend the day with family and friends that you love and you eat a lot um and I want to also say congratulations to Mr perro he's going to be our new Treasurer gonna miss you um and this is my last um time I get to talk about Veterans Day but I would like to talk about it as I do every year um World War I the Great War officially ended with the Treaty of Versailles and um actually when it and when the Treaty of Versailles was signed in June I think it was 1919 the um hostilities had ceased about 7 months earlier when an arm assy was developed between the Allied Nations and Germany as Dr uh bur said on

217the 11th Hour of the 11th day of the 11th month um and for that reason November 11th is generally regarded as the end of that uh war to end all wars I believe they called it later um a year later in November 1919 President Wilson proclaimed uh November 11th as the Comm commemoration of armas's day and he said in part to us in America the reflections of armas's day will be filled with solemn pride and the heroism of those who died in the country service and with the gratitude for the victory because both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity has given to America to show her sympathy with peace and Justice in the councils of nations in 1954 after World War II had required the greatest

218mobilization of soldiers Sailors Marines and Airmen in the nation's history and after Americans had fought aggression in Korea the 83rd Congress at the urging of the veteran service organizations amended the act of 1938 striking out the word armist and inserting in its place the word veterans with the approval of that law was Public Law 38 380 November 11th became a day to honor veterans of all wars this Veterans Day I'd like to just take a moment to offer thanks to the extraordinary men and women who have protect this nation throughout history by just listening to some words of our famous Americans one is a former representative Dan lapinsky who said on this Veterans Day let us remember remember the service of our veterans and let us renew our national promise to fulfill the sacred obligations

219to our veterans and their families who have sacrificed so much so that we can Live Free or Ronald Reagan we remember those who were called upon to give a person to give all a person can give and we remember those who were prepared to make that sacrifice it if it were demanded of them in the line of duty most of all we remember the devotion and gallantry with which all of them enbl their Nation as they became champions of a noble cause it's about how we treat our veterans said Barack Obama every single day of the year it's about making sure they have the care they need and the benefits they've earned when they come home I think that I'd also like to just take a moment to talk about Vietnam because I know all

220of you know that my husband fought in Vietnam as did 6 million other people and it's not my words about Vietnam are not to diminish any any other War or conflict that's the thing that impacted My Life um was his service in Vietnam so it's no more or no less for any other family who has a member who participated in another conflict but the Vietnam men and women um their memories of returning home um are of people who hate hated them a lot or merely treated them with total indifference they didn't return home to Cheers or ceremonies or celebrations and many Americans viewed the war as something that should be forgotten altogether but the Vietnam Veterans war memorial on our National Mall receives the most visitors of any Memorial on that wall with nearly 5

221million visitors every year if you've been there near the wall there's three service statues that guard that wall and a plaque not far from there reads in memory of the men and women who served in the Vietnam War and later died as a result of their service we honor and remember their sacrifice I said this last year I remember so many men and women were killed in Vietnam they just didn't die there they're dying Among Us right now from things typically the result of agent orange or simply their service in a war zone my husband was one of those helicopter pilots who served during America's helicopter War doing things such as rapid troop transport close air support resupply medical evacuations and search and rescues 12,000 helicopters were used in Vietnam and almost half over 5,000

222thousand were lost or destroyed my husband flew a huie which was considered one of the most dangerous jobs in the military at that time I'm incredibly proud and very humble of his service and all those who served alongside him in Vietnam and anyone who served our country yet to this day when you talk to my husband he will always say it was an honor and a privilege to serve his country and when told that he was a he's a hero he always always answers no I was just doing my job I still stand in awe of the veterans I know to me they are incredible American heroes and I know Mr hook you're a veteran do we have any other veterans here this evening thank you so much from the bottom of my heart as

223a civilian I don't understand what you did and I've never been there but it is a regret of my life that I did not serve our country and if I had to do it all again I would because you are incredible people and I think George Washington said it best it's about how excuse me the willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war no matter how Justified shall be directly proportional to how they perceive the veterans of earlier wars were treated and appreciated by their Nation this country has not seen and probably will never know the true level of Sacrifice from our veterans and as a civilian I owe a debt to all of you that is simply unpayable so George Washington I think says it all this Veterans Day

224is very important to all of our veterans so please take the time to recognize these individuals to help them if they need help and to teach your children how critical they are to the freedom that we enjoy every day and I know I used these words last year year but I still think they're very important the words of uh Winston Churchill never was so much owed by so many to so few and that would be the last time I get to talk about Veterans Day but I hope that everyone who's listening and everyone here just understands the sacrifice these people have made and it doesn't mean you had to have been in combat you sacrific just by serving this country and I sincerely thank you from that for that from the bottom of my heart

225thank you Mr H thank you Dr M Miss Harriston yes um I too would like to thank all of our veterans for their sacrifices um and for defending our rights and the privilege that we all have As Americans thank you um and also to our teachers and our staff members uh We've Thanksgiving holiday is coming up in I guess a week and a half maybe so I wish each and every one of you just a blessed holiday break and enjoy your time with family and friends and eat eat eat eat eat and just have fun and relaxation so that's all that I have thank you uh for my comments I would just say uh again thank you to the Board of Supervisors uh for passing that unanimously on Monday night um and then also thank

226you for JF to JF for hosting us tonight um and then I just wanted to touch base on the public comment um when I had a vision several years ago about bringing our board meetings to the high schools that tonight was what it was about um to allow one our students to be recognize the two to give them an opportunity uh to speak and our parents and our community uh in the area who is not normally willing or simply will not travel to Bedford to uh you know to one area so tonight was a prime example of what us having our meetings uh at the different high schools is all about so um I just wanted to say thank you um first of all congratulations to the teams uh but then second thank you to

227the students uh and the parents who were willing to stand up and and say something regarding the budget and what that program means to them so I appreciate that all right do I have a motion to go into Clos session uh Mr Vice chair p i do I have to I have to say the whole thing right the whole thing corre okay uh pursuant to code of Virginia 2.2 uh- 3711 a131 to discuss the assignment appointment performance disciplining and release of contract for specific School Board employees including the evaluation of the superintendent as provided in his contract of employment and three for the discussion or consideration of the acquisition of real property for public purpose or for the disposition of publicly held real property where discussion in an open meeting would adversely affect the bargaining

228position or negotiating strategy of the public body all right so I have a motion by Mr Daniels do I have a second second that was second by Dr mey um any discussion all right all of those um that approve us going into close session signify by saying I I I any opposed we are now in close session oh [Music] all right do I have a motion to come out of close session so move do I have a second second all right any discussion all of those in favor of coming out a close session please signify by saying I I I you need to um certify certify where the Bedford County school board has convened a close meeting on this date pursuant to an affirmative recorded vote and in accordance with the provisions of the Virginia

229Freedom of Information Act and where section 2.2 3712 D of the code of Virginia requires a certification by this school board that such closed meeting was conducted in Conformity with Virginia law now therefore be it resolved that the beer County School Board hereby certifies that to the best of each member's knowledge only public business matters lawfully Exempted from open meeting requirements by Virginia law were discussed in the closed meeting to which this certification applies and only such public business matters as were identified in the motion convening the closed meeting were heard discussed or considered yes yes yes yes yes yes thank you do I have a motion for the approval of the consent agenda so moved have a motion for the approval of consent agenda do I have a second second second by Mr Holbrook

230any discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I any opposed that is approved do I have a motion for adjournment so moved have a motion for adjournment do I have a second second second by Mr Holbrook any discussion all those in favor for adjournment please say I I any opposed we are adjourned thank you